The God Factor
by Shemyaza1
Summary: Crossover. Usual SG1 characters. The Goa'uld have been defeated but other enemies are on the rise. One System Lord who should be dead still lives and a mysterious and powerful group of beings have their own reasons for interfering in Galactic affairs.
1. Subjugation and Rescue

**Disclaimer: **I own none of the basic concepts of either Stargate SG1, or anything else. However all original characters do belong to me as does the basic plot for this story.

"Whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad." - **Eurypides**

**Chapter One – Subjugation and Rescue**

The woods were strangely silent. Not a breeze ruffled the leaves, not an animal large _or _small blundered through the undergrowth. Instead dark clouds silently roiled across a grey sky streaked with red, a testament to the blood that had been shed that day. Sharp thin needles of rain stabbed the ground turning trampled areas into patches of glutinous dark brown mud.

In the middle of the woods, only a mile away from the nearest inhabited village, stood a huge stone edifice. It looked extremely old, but few of the oldest villagers could remember a time when nothing had stood there but dense woodland.

Until _ they_ had come......

Through the blue water in the middle of the metal ring with their strange weapons they marched. They cleared a large part of the middle of the forest and, using forced labour from the villages, built the huge stone building. It was clearly built after some strange fashion of their own apparently, since no building on the planet had ever been built previously that stood on a large square base and rose to a point at its highest place.

The builders did not enlighten them as to its purpose, instead they were roughly and cruelly treated and told that they were now subjects of a god and that they must await his arrival. When he came they were to choose between obeisance and death.

When the builders finally left through the gate with its shining blue pool of water, they took with them the finest specimens of both genders, ripping them violently and indiscriminately from families, husbands, wives and children. There was much grieving and fear and many discussions among elders from all the surrounding villages. But there seemed no way to follow and try as they might, the villagers could not work out how to operate the metal ring.

After a while all seemed quiet and gradually life settled down into its usual peaceful and bucolic routine. The seasons came and went, young folk met, wooed and married, children were born and the elderly died, much as they had done before the visitation.

And so life went on and they thought nothing more of either the metal ring that had burst into life that day nor the strange pointed building in the woods, although those few who still remembered the first arrival of the strange builders would shudder at the sight of the stone pinnacle of the building standing far above the tree line.

Yet even that faded into memory as the trees grew higher and completely obliterated any visual evidence that the building had been built in the first place. Gradually those who had been alive then died and soon no one was left who remembered that time.

After a while the visitation was consigned to stories told to frighten children into behaving but from some unspoken agreement the building itself and that part of the woods were shunned by even the bravest of poachers or hunters looking for game.

Gradually nature encroached, as it habitually does. Clumps of grass grew at the base of the building, the forest crept ever nearer but only long questing tendrils of ivy dared to try and breach the upward sloping stone walls. However, the paving placed in front of the building stayed strangely unchanged. No grass grew there, no weeds encroached and the trees restricted themselves almost as if some power held them back.

The gaping gloomy maw of the entrance stood open wide, but hardly welcoming for all that. For those brave enough to enter all that was found was an empty and echoing audience chamber with a stone throne placed on a long wide shelf high above the central area with stairs leading down to the floor. Behind the throne was a large circular area which seemed to serve no purpose whatsoever, but apart from a strange metallic ring set into the surface of the floor there did not seem to be access to any other part of the building.

There were no carvings on the stone inside to indicate which god may have order it built and the flickering torchlight of those brave souls merely showed a wide floor area now covered in dust. There were metal sconces placed in niches in the walls, presumably for torches, but apart from all that it was empty and eerily deserted.

The building was henceforth officially designated as a taboo place and such were the memories of the violence and cruelty handed down, that everyone, including curious children, obeyed the law that no one should enter it without good reason and permission from the Elders. It was a place of the Gods it was stated by Elder decree, but which gods, nobody could actually recall.

And soon the building and its creators gradually faded into deepest memory.

Until one fateful day.......

ooOoo

"My Lord, the creature still lives."

The tall cloaked figure turned and lifted one perfectly sculpted eyebrow at the speaker, a man with long and lustrous silky blond hair, who knelt beside the huddled, pathetic remains of what had, only hours earlier, been a living, breathing person. "Unharmed?"

The man who had spoken lifted one hand holding a pale wriggling snake-like creature which hissed and snapped at the air with its multi-part mouth. "It would appear so my Lord. Although I would describe the creature's mood as a trifle annoyed." There was a note of silvery laughter in the man's voice.

The cloaked man also laughed, a rich golden sound, revealing a set of perfect white teeth set in a face that could only be described as beautiful beyond belief. Blue eyes shone brightly with a light that few could endure to look at for any length of time.

"Indeed." He agreed softly. "Perhaps that was an understatement though." He continued thoughtfully after examining the obviously incensed creature. He then turned to a tall warrior who stood as still as stone and as silent beside him. "The container?"

The warrior reached into his cloak and brought out a medium sized clear crystal jar. Inside the jar a pure light shone as if the container itself was filled with captured starlight. He handed it to his lord without a word. The cloaked man removed the stopper by waving his hand over the neck of the jar and extended it to the blond man who still held the furiously hissing and wriggling creature in one strong hand. The creature was carefully placed inside the jar and immediately became quiescent as the leader again passed his hand over the top and sealed it inside. He handed it to the warrior who produced a large square of silky looking grey cloth. The jar was carefully wrapped in it.

The leader nodded to the warrior. "You have my permission to leave, but be careful. My kin await this creature with great interest."

The tall warrior inclined his head and disappeared as if by magic. It was almost as if his body had dissipated into separate particles. One minute he was there and the next he had gone. Not even tracks from his boots were left in the soft trampled earth.

The leader prepared to recall the rest of his companions who were on watch to ensure that none disturbed them, but even as he did so, he saw movement through the trees surrounding the clearing where the base of the pyramid stood and a soft bird call to his left alerted him to the fact that the others had also seen people approaching. Another warrior materialised beside him.

"My Lord, we should leave now." His tone was slightly anxious. "People from the village approach along with others who have newly come through the gate."

The leader nodded. "They have come to ensure that the creature is truly dead." He said pensively. He gazed over to where the body, still huddled over, lay. "And those who have come through the gate are from Earth. They will no doubt also wish confirmation of the kill."

The blond man made a face. "After all this time, they appear to have learned very little." His voice was both mildly disapproving and sad.

"Peace child." The leader placed a strong, yet finely shaped hand on his arm and there was great compassion in his expression. "They have much reason to hate. These creatures have created great dissension in this galaxy and have ruled with violence and cruelty. It _must _be brought to an end. The others have gone back now and you should also return."

The other man assented and started to coalesce into particles but just as quickly began to solidify back again when he saw that his companion had not yet begun to unclothe himself of his fleshly form. "You are not coming with us my Lord?"

The leader stared into the trees. His eyes shone with a light not dissimilar to the light inside the container which now held a prime Goa'uld symbiote.

"Not yet." He smiled gently but dismissively at the blond man. "I still have something to do. But _you_ must leave."

The blond man inclined his head respectfully and de-materialised again, leaving the imposing figure alone at the top of the cracked stone steps leading up to the pyramid.

The leader of the small group now moved into the shadows swiftly as the unmistakable sound of transporter rings filled the stone room. Such were the properties of his clothing that he blended completely into the background as four figures stepped out from the rings behind the long low stone throne, bickering comfortably and with the long ease of familiarity with each other as they did so.

The four left the pyramid and stepped outside to where the villagers now formed a silent throng around the dead body of their former god and the Watcher silently and unseen followed them.

ooOoo

Jack O'Neill flipped a salute in answer to the Marine Corps Major in charge of SG7. The Marine grinned cheerfully at him and jerked a thumb towards the still figure lying sprawled in the mud. "And another one bites the dust Colonel?"

The Colonel grinned back. "It did and it _sure _never gets old." He quipped back and looked around at the silent villagers. "I guess they needed to see for themselves."

A tall, attractive blonde woman took a step over to the body."Are we going to bury it Sir? The body I mean."

"What the hell for?" Jack's grey eyebrows snapped together. "It's a damn Goold, Major. I don't care if they burn it on a bonfire or use it for target practice."

Major Samantha Carter pursed her lips in silent reproval. "Yes sir, but Goa'uld aside, the host was a human being and it was hardly his fault that he was taken as a host."

A bespectacled brown haired young man in his thirties with a boyishly handsome but earnest face standing beside her nodded in enthusiastic agreement.

The Colonel knew when he was beaten. This was an argument he had heard many times before, so in order to avoid the inevitable avalanche of scientific explanations and humanitarian comments that he knew fine well would suffocate him, he held out both hands placatingly. "Okay, _okay_, we can bury him if that makes you happy, but let's ask the planet's residents what they want to do with it first, all right? We don't want to spoil their first bit of fun since being dictated to by false gods now do we?"

Carter sighed and shook her head in mild despair. Sometimes the Colonel stepped over to the wrong side of crass, but his hatred of the Goa'uld was fierce. He had lost friends and people close to him in their battle to rid themselves of this enemy. They all had, Daniel had lost his wife, Teal'c had lost family and friends and she...well...she had her own reasons for hating and fearing them. She shrugged. "Okay sir, sounds fair enough to me."

The other man harrumphed impatiently, then sighed and pushed his glasses up his nose, more from habit than anything else. That was as close as Jack O'Neill was going to get to being reasonable when it came to the Goa'uld.

"O'Neill." The powerfully built black man with the gold raised emblem tattooed on his forehead was kneeling beside the corpse and frowning at it in concern.

"What is it Teal'c?"

"The symbiote is not here." He stated stiffly, but not even the formal tones could mask the contempt with which he mentioned the Goa'uld symbiote.

The Jaffa member of SG1 stood up and looked searchingly around the muddy, trampled ground. Every inch of his body was alert and the rest of his team and SG7 had learned that when this formidable warrior acted in this way, there really_ was _something concrete to worry about.

"Whaddya mean, not here? It's _got_ to be here. Where the hell could it have gone?' O'Neill stepped over to the body and stared down at it. He prodded it tentatively with the toe of his boot. "I mean you and Carter wouldn't sense it if it was dead would you? It's probably still in there wrapped around his spine." His voice held a vaguely disgusted tone at the thought of anything that didn't belong there being wrapped around _anyone's_ spine

The brown haired man, Dr Daniel Jackson, archaeologist and linguist for the team, had knelt down beside the body in the meantime. "I don't think so Jack." He gingerly lifted the heavy fur cloak away from the face of the corpse. "Look."

Jack bent over and immediately drew back in revulsion, covering his mouth with his hand at the same time. "Oh for crying out loud....it's like something from a godamned horror movie. What the hell is happening here? Carter!"

Her ever present curiosity thoroughly aroused, Carter walked over to him and immediately pulled a face. The corpse, previously that of a fairly handsome male about forty years of age, had started to wither and shrivel inside the clothes. The body was literally mummifying in front of their eyes and the musty smell usually associated with the extremely ancient was evident.

"It's age sir, the symbiote kept the host young, alive and healthy and probably used a sarcophagus regularly to stay that way. We don't know how long he had the host, it could have been thousands of years. Without the symbiote's ability to heal it would just age really quickly once it was dead or the symbiote abandoned it."

"Well, I guess that solves the question of what to do with the body." The Marine Corps Major quipped.

The Jaffa turned a basilik gaze on him that would have silenced most people and in fact the Major did stop in mid sentence and go a little pink around the ears. "Indeed you are correct Major, however since the corpse is now disappearing because of its extreme age, we can also now plainly see that there is _no_ symbiote, dead or otherwise, wrapped around the spinal column."

Daniel stood up with alacrity, feeling for his side arm and Carter did the same, hefting her P90 up into a ready position.

"He's right Jack, there _is _no symbiote." He gazed around at the villagers who were now muttering restlessly among themselves at the sight of the corpse disappearing into the ground in front of their very eyes. "We have got to get these people out of here. We don't know where the damn thing has gone. It could jump into any of them and get away."

"But surely it must have been injured right along with the host." Jack persisted. That damn tricky Goold just _had_ to be dead. He did _not_ want to believe otherwise. "Those injuries were pretty severe, death had to have been instantaneous. And what about when we carted him down from the ship? If the symbiote was alive why didn't he try to jump into one of us?"

"Perhaps it thought its chances were better if it left once we had dumped the body so it played possum until we left." Carter pondered. "It was left lying there unguarded for sometime. We just assumed that both host _and _symbiote were dead."

Her eyes were glued to the ground searching for any sign of a pale snake like creature wriggling through the thick undergrowth. SG7 had begun to chivvy the villagers back to the village after Daniel had explained to one of the villager elders that they could still be in great danger if they hung around. The villagers needed no further prompting.

"Ya think? I guess we better start a search." Jack prodded at the body again and the last of the flesh fell away to dust revealing a length of backbone exposed but no sign of a symbiote. "Are we sure that the snake didn't just turn to dust as well?"

Nobody dignified his question with any kind of answer for the moment as they began preparing to do an extensive ground search in a circular pattern around the area where the body lay.

After a good thirty minutes searching and poking bushes, but finding no sign of a symbiote, they walked back to the corpse which was now mostly skeleton wrapped in a bundle of clothing.

Jack frowned. "How far could it get without a host, in fact how does it move without a host?"

"They can propel themselves in a sort of flight Jack. Don't you remember? Those larval Goa'uld we found on that other planet that time seemed to be able to jump fair distances. But I doubt that it could have gone that far without a host, it had been inside the host for a very long time and the vestigial fins it used to have probably to help with movement had would have all but disappeared." Daniel pursed his lips in disgust and anger at the thought of how long _that_ particular Goa'uld must have occupied his host.

"Oh yeah, forgot about that. Okay, well I guess we're gonna have to take the remains back to SGC with us and get the Doc to do some forensic stuff on it." He gestured with distaste at the body. "And in the meantime we'll question the villagers and make sure it didn't jump into some random gawker rubbernecking at the dead body. Carter?"

Sam Carter sighed and opened her pack. In it, among the medical kit she carried, were a couple of bags that were meant for use as lightweight body bags. She had often wondered why they had to carry body bags, but now they would come in handy. She spread one out on the ground, put on a pair of rubber gloves and smiled at Teal'c.

"On it sir." She handed the Jaffa another pair of gloves. " Help me get it into the bag Teal'c."

ooOoo

The cloaked man watched with interest from his hiding place as the woman and the Jaffa gingerly lifted the remains into the odd looking bag which she had unfolded onto the ground. They finally zipped it shut and handed it over to the leader of the other team who immediately headed back to the Stargate with their burden.

The watcher was mildly amused that they were obviously concerned that the symbiote had somehow escaped unhurt and was at large. It was rather unfortunate that the Jaffa had been so quick to notice that fact but it could not be helped. Had he and his companions delayed, the symbiote would have either found another host or died and they needed it unharmed and alive.

The blonde woman unpeeled the gloves from her hands. "We should go and talk to the villagers now sir, just to make sure."

"Yes Major, and we _are_ going to do just that." The tall grizzle haired man agreed. He shouldered his weapon and pack and the four of them ,accompanied by a couple of the other team members, started to head through the trees towards where the village was located. As they tramped back through the woods they appeared to be constantly alert and on the lookout.

Yet, as alert and efficient as they undoubtedly were, they _still_ failed to notice the tall figure that shadowed them through the trees as they moved towards the village.

ooOoo


	2. A posteriori

**Disclaimer: **I own none of the basic concepts of either Stargate SG1, or anything else. However all original characters do belong to me as does the basic plot for this story.

"The man who is constantly in fear is every day condemned. " - Syrus

**Chapter Two - A posteriori ***

**Stargate Command, Cheyenne Mountain**

"Ah home sweet home!" O'Neill stepped lightly down the ramp followed by Teal'c and Sam Carter and a minute or so later, also by Daniel Jackson.

"Welcome back SG1. I take it that all went well and that there is hopefully one less System Lord to worry about?" General George Hammond, currently in command of Stargate Command stood at the bottom of the stairs. He nodded at the surrounding guard to stand down.

Jack hesitated slightly, a fact which did not go unnoticed by the General who raised one eyebrow in query. "Colonel?"

"Ah yes sir." Jack smiled brightly at the General. " As far as we believe the System Lord known as Cronus is now dead, deceased and defunct. I assume that SG7 brought the remains back with them?"

As usual their Commanding Officer gave nothing away in his expression. "They brought back a body bag Colonel, which I thought was rather unusual, but I am still awaiting their debrief. I thought under the circumstances that I would debrief you and SG7 together. The contents of the body bag are currently being examined by Dr Frasier. Hopefully we will also have her input by the time we hold the debriefing which will be at 1800 hours sharp. I will expect a full explanation then. Until that time you are dismissed to clean up and get something to eat." He included the whole team in his last order, nodded and headed back up to his office near the gate control room.

"Oh for a nice long shower and perhaps some leave to go fishing. There's got to be some reward for a hard day's Goa'uld bashing don't you think?" Jack's blissful tones floated back to them all as he ambled out of the Gateroom and headed along the corridor to the living quarters of the base.

Sam grinned to herself as she followed him out and Teal'c raised an eyebrow. Only Daniel didn't react to Jack's usual fairly mindless repartee.

In fact he hadn't spoken at all since returning, something which had not gone unnoticed by Teal'c who resolved to speak with him later. Usually he was babbling incoherently to anyone who would listen about some item or event of archaeological or linguistic interest that had happened during their mission and this time plenty had happened including teaming up with their android other halves manufactured by Harlan on the planet Altair.

During their mission Daniel Jackson's android double had been executed by Cronus and that act had signalled the end of him as his reaction had been sufficiently shocked enough to convince the fighters of Juna that he was a false god. A real god would be omniscient and would have known that the Daniel Jackson in front of him was just an android. Jackson _had _been shocked by the fact that his double had been summarily beheaded, Teal'c had seen how quiet and yet how determined he had been to see Cronus fall. Perhaps he was still suffering from some form of shock and needed to speak of it..

For himself Teal'c felt less than satisfied. Deep inside he felt that his rejoicing in the death of his mortal enemy and the avenging of his father's murder was premature, yet he had seen the killing blow. He had seen Cronus fall with two fatal staff weapon blasts in his host's body.

Rationality stated that he must be dead, so why did Teal'c feel so uncertain?

The fact was that almost anything could have happened to a still living symbiote after they carried the body down to be flung in front of the pyramid for the villagers to see that their god was not immortal.

Was it at all possible that Cronus had survived the two blasts? And if so, where was he now?

He wanted to believe that the symbiote was dead and was hopeful that Dr Frasier would be able to confirm this fact. In the meantime he too would shower and then perform Kelno'reem until the debriefing time. That would hopefully calm him and allay some of his fears.

ooOoo

Daniel Jackson also had a shower, but Jack was making so much noise in the shower heads along with members of SG4 who had also just returned from a mission, that he hardly noticed how quiet the young scientist was. Daniel himself was too preoccupied to noticed the Jaffa's penetrating gaze on him as he slowly lathered, rinsed, dried and then dressed himself.

After showering Daniel grabbed a large cup of coffee and headed back to his office cum laboratory. He also needed quiet to try and gather together his scattered thoughts about the last couple of days.

He sat at his desk and brought up his latest research into some tablets that they had found on a planet which had long been abandoned by both the original inhabitants and the Goa'uld, but he found it impossible to concentrate. He nervously kept up a rapid tattoo of rapping on the desk with his pencil and his thoughts kept straying to those last few seconds before he stepped through the Juna gate to return to SGC.

One visual kept intruding constantly however and finally he opened a drawing tablet, took up his pencil and feverishly began to draw.

ooOoo

**The Briefing Room, SGC, 1800 hours Zulu**

"Let's hear your findings on the remains Dr Frasier." General Hammond poured himself out a cup of coffee from the pot and eased himself in his chair at the head of the large conference table. They had just sat through the in depth reports from both SG1 and SG7.

General Hammond had already received the written reports from both team commanders and had assessed from that information what kind of follow on assistance they could offer to the people of Juna. A team had probably already been briefed and were waiting embarkation even as the formal briefing was being held.

Petite dark haired and sweet faced Dr Janet Frasier smiled and opened a folder which contained the autopsy report on the remains of the Goa'uld System Lord Cronus and his host.

"Certainly sir. As you all know, the Goa'uld and the Tok'ra both secrete Naquadah naturally. It is because of the presence of the mineral in the bloodstream that they can use certain technology and they also secrete it into the bloodstream of their hosts for that reason. Therefore on microscopic examination I would _expect_ to see large amounts of the mineral from the samples took from the remains. This would indicate both that the human form was indeed a host to a Goa'uld and would also indicate the presence of the symbiote which we also know is usually absorbed back into the body of the host upon death."

Janet Frasier stopped for a moment and hid a smile at the sight of the Colonel's eyes glazing over as he ripped little bits from the rim of the Styrofoam cup in front of him and methodically stuffed them down into the remainder of the cup. When it came to scientific things he had the attention span of a goldfish.

She realised from the slightly impatient look on his face that the General also wanted to hear the short version and decided to have mercy on them. "On examination I found sufficient amounts in the remains to indicate that the symbiote most probably was absorbed into the host when they both died and I have concluded that this is why the symbiote wasn't detected. I find it extremely unlikely that the symbiote could have survived those injuries, even protected as it was inside the body." She finished her summary and smiled brightly at everyone around the table.

"So he _is _dead then." The General persisted.

"That would be my findings were this to go on an official death certificate." Janet confirmed

The General sat back in his seat. "Well then ladies and gentlemen, let me congratulate you on a job well done. Not to mention the fact that we have a System Lord Mothership all of our own now thanks to the efforts of SG1 and the Harlan's androids. All that remains is for me to send a welfare team through with doctors and counsellors to offer some assistance to the people of Juna to help them get back on their feet. I will also strongly advise that once we have given them whatever help they need or want, that they should bury their Stargate. Of course this will not help them if another Goa'uld decides to send a ship in, but it's the best we can do under the circumstances. SG3 are standing by to head through the gate as we speak."

He rose to his feet and went to the large windows that looked out over the Gateroom. The other members of the briefing joined him as they heard the usual grinding noise of the Stargate being dialled out.

"Chevron two encoded....chevron three encoded.....chevron four encoded........." The technician controlling the gate dialling computer's voice echoed monotonously over the tannoy system.

Down below Daniel could see the members of SG3 busily checking the equipment and that of the medical team which also included counsellors. They had a tracked vehicle packed high with supplies and medical equipment.

"Chevron five encoded......"

The gate clunked as the chevron locked into place and lit up before it revolved around to the next Chevron number six. After this the gate would encode chevron seven which would then lock and signal that the wormhole had been established.

"Chevron six encoded...." The gate moved slowly around and the chevron clicked into the seventh symbol, but did not light up. Instead there was a dull clanking sound and the gate remained still. No lighting up of the seventh chevron, no smooth encoding and no whoosh to indicate an open wormhole.

Even from where he was standing Daniel could see the consternation on Walter Harriman's face as he stoically instructed the computer to dial each chevron again. The waiting team were looking up at the control room with confused expressions. The chevrons ground around once more and again refused to lock on the seventh symbol. By this time Walter had been joined by Sam Carter who was now sitting at another computer busy running a gate diagnostic program. The General stood behind her obviously asking what was going on, a question that neither she nor Walter had any answer for judging by their concerned expressions.

"Well now...I guess the briefing is over." Jack got up to his feet. As senior officer present he had decided to formally end the briefing. "Dismissed. Go get some sleep or whatever."

He nodded at the remaining personnel as they left the room with alacrity and headed down to the Gate control room followed by Daniel and Teal'c.

"Have we dialled the right symbols?" Even as he asked the question Hammond knew that it was a futile one.

Carter answered him anyway. "Yes sir, those are the symbols for the Juna gate. I can't understand why we can't get a lock, the gate was fine when we came through from there only six hours ago."

"Is it possible that they've buried the gate themselves?"

"I suppose it's possible, but we did say that we would send supplies and a medical team back before we left. We spoke to the Elders and they were happy to be getting some help. I can't see what could have happened between then and now to change their minds." Carter sighed in frustration. "It's not gate error either, the diagnostic program is saying that the gate is working fine. We can't even send a MALP through to send back telemetry."

Hammond turned to Teal'c. "Teal'c you know the Goa'uld as well, if not better than anyone here, is it possible that Cronus' people sent another ship once they heard he was dead? Did he have a queen? Someone who would want to avenge his death perhaps?"

"I doubt it General Hammond. The consort of Cronus is a Goa'uld queen called Rhea and she is powerful in her own right. From what I know of her it is more likely that she would rejoice in the fact that all of Cronus' territories would now belong to her. Although it is possible that she would go to Juna in an effort to appear to be avenging her Lord, if only for the sake of the other System Lords' support of her annexing his power. However it is much more likely that Cronus' people have been thrown into disarray with his death. Most of his senior Underlords and scientists would have been on his Mothership with him."

Jack rolled his eyes. "Gee, well _that_ was a match made in heaven." He glanced over at the oddly silent Daniel. "Any thoughts Daniel? You've been pretty quiet for the last couple of hours."

Daniel flushed bright pink as everyone turned to look at him. "Well...er...I wasn't sure I should mention it because I'm not sure whether.." His voice trailed away uncertainly.

Jack speared him with an accusing gaze. "Mention what Daniel? Have you been holding out on us?"

"N..not intentionally Jack, it's just that I wasn't exactly sure myself..."

Jack sighed with exasperation. "Sure about _what_ Daniel? This is like pulling teeth."

Hammond looked keenly at the young man. Discomfort was written all over his face. "Perhaps it would be better if we continued this upstairs." He said diplomatically.

Daniel nodded miserably. He still wasn't sure whether to mention what he had seen as he was about to step into the gate to come back home, but in the light of the gate address for Juna not working he couldn't dismiss the niggling feeling that it was relevant. He followed the others back up to the briefing room as General Hammond dismissed the waiting team.

Once the were seated back in the briefing room Hammond settled back. "Okay Dr Jackson, let's have it son."

Daniel gripped his coffee mug between both hands for a moment as if it offered him support, then he searched in his inside jacket pocket and pulled out a folded sheet of drawing paper which he slid over to the General.

Hammond took the paper and unfolded it. He examined it for a minute or so and then passed it onto Jack. Once the paper had been around the table, he turned to Daniel. "Dr Jackson, what does the drawing of what appears to be a knight from the Dark Ages have to do with the Stargate on Juna?"

"Well..that's why I didn't say anything, because I wasn't sure what I was seeing either." Daniel leant forward earnestly. "When we dialled home, Jack and the others went through the gate. I was last to go through and something...I'm not sure what...made me stop and look behind me." He thrust a trembling finger towards the drawing. "He was at the bottom of the steps up to the Gate."

Jack frowned. "Just standing there? Did he say anything?"

"No, but I suddenly had the impression that I knew what he was. I remembered something I had been reading before the mission, from those tablets we found on that deserted planet. A reference made to a..a species or a people who were apparently immortal and lived between dimensions or realities and who rarely involved themselves in the lives of men." Daniel's voice was growing in conviction.

"Between dimensions or realities?" Sam looked skeptical. "Daniel, that's impossible. We know that there are many realities or parallel dimensions. We...you've... even had contact with them yourself. Nobody can exist_ between _the realities, you must mean that they are an alternative reality."

Daniel shook his head. "No, the translation of the tablet was quite clear. These people live outside normal reality and normal dimensions."

"And you think this man, the one standing watching us go through the gate was one of these people?" Jack sounded even more skeptical. "Did you catch his name by any chance?"

Daniel pursed his lips. "Not funny Jack. I said that I got an _impression_ that he was one of these people, not that he _introduced _himself as one. I wasn't even sure that I had actually seen him which is why I didn't mention it in the first place." He folded and then unfolded the piece of paper absently and bit his lip. "Hell I am still not sure what I saw. It was just an impression and probably not relevant, but it occurred to me that if he _had_ been there, it could have been him who disabled the gate."

"Why the _hell _didn't you say something?" Jack fumed. "Why do you always keep things to yourself?"

"What good would it have done once we were through the gate?" Daniel shot back angrily. "You had already stomped through the gate rambling on about hot showers and fishing. If he _was _there and he _did_ disable the gate, he would have done it once we had all passed through. I could hardly reach through and drag you back."

Hammond stared at the young man. "Was he a Goa'uld Dr Jackson? _Could _he have been a Goa'uld? After all your drawing shows his eyes to be lit up."

"More importantly, could it have been Cronus in another host?" Carter interrupted.

Daniel shook his head. "No, there was a light streaming from his eyes, but it wasn't the same kind of light. It was different, bright and pure, like captured starlight and his face was full of compassion, sympathy and regret as if he knew what we had been through and was sorry about it." He shook his head again. "I'm not making sense, I know."

"Could it have been an Ancient?" Sam queried.

Daniel shook his head again. "He was _more_ than that, older than that. It was only brief, but I had the strangest feeling that he had existed before and beyond time and that was why I didn't want to mention it. I know the whole thing sounds utterly crazy..._I _sound crazy."

Hammond stood up. "Well crazy or not, it's a better possibility than the others. For now I think it best if we contact the Tok'ra and ask them if they are maybe sending a ship near Juna and if so to stop and assess the situation. If the Goa'uld have retaken the planet we need to know anyway, because we are responsible now for whatever retribution may have been taken against the people there. I suggest you all get some well deserved rest. Tomorrow is another day."

ooOoo

**Somewhere at the end of a lost road..**

In a large airy room with unglazed windows open to the elements stands a marble table on a large square plinth on which rests a medium sized crystal jar. At each corner of the plinth stands a motionless warrior, each with hands resting on massive shining swords engraved with runes. They wear bright mail covered in white surcoats with the emblem of an eagle imprinted on them. Their bright hair hangs down their back in a long braid. Their faces are fair beyond the normal measure of humans and their expressions are stern and uncompromising.

The symbiote inside the jar is also motionless, but it _is_ awake and it _can_ see. It can see that it is a prisoner in a place filled with light. Its' guardians are humanoid, but not at _all _human in any sense of the word and all around there is a sense of immense power which the symbiote is both attracted to and repelled away from.

For the first time in its existence the symbiote Cronus feels real fear. He is not dead, but he is beginning to understand that it might have been better for him if he was.

ooOoo

***A posteriori** (_Latin)_ relating to or derived by reasoning from observed facts


	3. Nightmares and Dreamscapes

**Disclaimer: **I own none of the basic concepts of either Stargate SG1, or anything else. However all original characters do belong to me as does the basic plot for this story.

"Even a god finds it hard to love and be wise at the same time"

**Chapter Three – Nightmares and Dreamscapes**

Daniel was dreaming. He had found a lost city built out of a mountainside of gleaming white stone and shaped like the prow of a massive ship.

A winding road led from the city gates up and around in a spiral, a bit like a helter skelter. Tall narrow dwellings and commercial buildings stood on either side of the road and each level was closed with a massive set of gates curretly lying open. As he trudged up the road open doorways beckoned to him with the excitement of the unknown and perhaps artefacts to find, but Daniel knew that he must go on upwards to the top. Everything was dazzling white stone and he found himself wishing that he had sunglasses on. All this dazzling light would definitely give him a headache.

On the topmost level of the city was a huge courtyard with a building complex partially surrounding it at one end. In the middle of the courtyard was a large oval shaped mound with a white stone wall encircling it about three feet in height. In the middle of the mound there was one tree of a species Daniel didn't recognise at all which had large white flowers with a delicate, but pervasive, scent. There was a wide paved path all around the mound and elaborate stone benches set here and there, almost as though this part of the courtyard where people came to sit and pay homage.

Pay homage? Where had that come from? Even in his dream Daniel froze at those unbidden words and cast a wary glance around him at the wide expanse of space. The only time he ever thought of words like homage was when he was smack bang up against the Goa'uld. _They _demanded homage. Was this a place of the Goa'uld?

When he called out a tentative hello, he could hear that his voice wavered thinly, very much in the fashion of an elderly person facing something fearful and as soon as the hello left his lips he could have kicked himself. He had just done the very thing that he criticised characters in movies and on television for doing. After all, if you were in a scary place would you really call out hello to attract the attention of the very monsters you were trying to avoid?

As often happens in dreams, the scene suddenly shifted and Daniel found himself at the very prow of the 'ship'. He looked down and immediately wished that he hadn't. His head swam as he realised how far up he was. A wave of dizziness hit him again and he grasped the edge of the stone parapet to stop himself from plunging at least a thousand feet to his death. He reeled back gasping, staggered and sat down hard on his rear end.

The scene shifted again and this time he was at the entrance of a long causeway which ultimately led to a huge set of carved double doors set in the mountainside. A stone guardhouse stood at the entrance and sconces were set in the walls along the sides of the causeway which Daniel surmised were for torches to light the way. On either side of the causeway was a sheer drop. So sheer Daniel could not see the bottom.

A cold waft of fear prickled his neck and he knew that he really didn't want to walk along that causeway, There was either something nasty waiting for him, or he was going to have to do something he really didn't want to do, so he turned to go back to the relative safety of the courtyard, but again, as in dreams, his legs simply wouldn't carry him away. Instead every time he managed to get a couple of yards away from the guardhouse, he found the entrance inexorably facing him again.

"Okay, I guess I have to open door number three." He joked feebly to himself, but as jokes go it was a poor one and didn't give him the fillip of courage it was intended to give him. He set his shoulders, automatically feeling for his weapon which he grasped and gained some comfort from. He lifted it from the holster but instead of his gun, he held up a Black and Decker cordless drill.

"Uh? Oh for crying out loud." He sighed to himself. "I really must stop spending time with Jack, his sayings are rubbing off on me. And this is a dream, of _course_ it would be a drill and not a weapon. Dreams never make sense. It could just have easily been an electric egg whisk."

He failed to notice that while his thoughts had been meandering,_ he _had apparently been walking because the gargantuan carved doors at the end of the causeway now loomed above him. There were equally gargantuan round, burnished metal doorknobs set in either door and below one, incongruously, there was a normal sized keyhole but no sign of any key..

"I guess I need try and get in." He said out loud to no one in particular, but it comforted him in some small way to hear his own voice. He pushed the door tentatively at first and then harder, but it stood solid against his best efforts, so he then grasped hold of one of the massive doorknobs and pulled with every bit of his strength. Again, the door stood fast against his efforts.

"You may wish to try the lock." A familiar voice behind him made him spin around. Forgetting that somehow his weapon had turned into a cordless drill he fumbled for it and pulled out a hair-dryer pointing it wildly in the direction of someone he most positively did _not _want to see again.

"What are you going to do? _Blow _me to death?"

Cronus, former System Lord of the Goa'uld and current dead snake, according to the records of the SGC casually sat on one of the walls obviously completely uncaring that the drop behind him was thousands of feet. He was even swinging his legs unconcernedly. Then he smiled that feral smile of his, slid to the ground and sauntered over to Daniel who took a step back and found the doors right behind him. "On second thoughts, I will rephrase that, the term '_blow me'_ has an entirely different meaning among you Tau'ri does it not?"

"Ah...ah..." Daniel stuttered and raised the hair-dryer, waving it as threateningly as he could in Cronus' face.

Cronus laughed even harder and sauntered past him with a superior look on his face that made Daniel itch to punch him. He gestured to one of the doors.

"The key." He said with a cheery grin which somehow worried Daniel much more than the feral one.

The Goa'uld was pointing at a large glass box which had appeared on the door. Inside was a large brass key. Above the box something was written in large black Asgard symbols, but the harder Daniel tried to deciper it, the harder it became to see.

Suddenly, getting through the doors and into the building beyond became imperative to Daniel, he moved closer until he and Cronus were standing a bit too close for comfort next to each other. A smell reminiscent of burned dog hair assailed his nostrils and he sneezed. His glasses slid down his nose; Cronus reached out and gently pushed them back up.

"Thank you." Daniel said politely, as if they were in some social event and Cronus had just offered him a cup of coffee and a piece of cake.

"You're welcome." Cronus' breath tickled his cheek and Daniel shifted uncomfortably.

"Did you know you smell of burnt dog?"

Cronus moved away slightly and frowned. "Really? It's the cloak you see. It was burned when they killed me." He did a twirl and Daniel could see the two huge burnt holes in the back of the dark brown fur cloak. "It was my favourite as well. Very soft."

Daniel stared at him. "I'm sorry." He said helplessly.

"That's all right." Cronus said encouragingly. "I don't really need it where I am. It's always warm here." He nodded towards the door. "But you have somewhere else to go and you haven't used the key yet."

Daniel turned his attention from the Goa'uld and reached out to the glass box. He tapped on it experimentally thinking perhaps it was a touch screen of some sort.

"I can't read the letters above it." He said finally, feeling rather foolish.

Cronus sighed. "For someone with your enormous frontal lobe, you can be remarkably stupid. I already told you. It's a key." He walked up to the box and pointed at the lettering above it. "See? It's a key. It says _key_."

"Okay, _okay_." Daniel spat out. "It's a key, I get it."

"Good. Now get the key." Cronus went back to his perch on the wall, took out a nail file and began to carefully file his already perfect nails.

"So...is there some special way to get it out of the glass?"

Cronus sighed again and put the nail file away. He got off the wall, reached into the folds of the smelly cloak and took out a claw hammer with which he smashed the box. Glass and the key tinkled gently to the ground. He put the hammer back in his cloak and stood waiting.

Daniel picked up the key and turned it over in his hand.

"Well what are you waiting for? You know that you have to go in, the key won't unlock the door from there you know." Cronus sounded impatient.

Daniel placed the key in the lock and to his surprise it turned smoothly. He leaned against the door to push it open and nearly fell over when it swung back as though it weighed nothing at all.

Cronus stepped past him into the gloom. "Well _finally._.."

"_Why_ are _you _in my dream again?" Daniel demanded, his temper was beginning to fray. He wanted to shake that smug snake until his white teeth rattled in his head.

The Goa'uld shrugged. "I have no idea. Presumably because you want me here. It's _your_ dream. I don't think I'm in charge of things like that."

Daniel huffed an annoyed sigh and stepped through the open door cautiously. "What is this place? It's so cold."

He tentatively touched the walls which were stone and his voice echoed along what may or may not have been a long corridor. There was a crackling sound and suddenly torchlight flared from a torch held in Cronus' hand. There was no evidence of anything to light it with, but Daniel was beginning to realise that because this was a dream, anything was possible. Even randomly appearing, already lit torches. Nothing needed to make sense in dreams.

"It's a house of the dead." Cronus' voice echoed sepulchrally down the corridor, for it was indeed a corridor they were standing at the end of.

"A tomb?"

"Yes" Cronus grinned at him again. "Isn't that what you do? Explore tombs? You should feel right at home."

Daniel's annoyance gave way to anger. "Okay, t_hat's it_. I have had enough of you. Get out of my dream."

Cronus' laughter bounced off the stone walls and echoed back so many times it sounded like chattering birds. "It doesn't work like that Daniel...you..."

He didn't finish whatever he was going to say because they were both nearly knocked flying by a tall man wearing a tweed suit on a bicycle.

"Gaaangway! _Coomin' _through!"

Daniel stopped dead, he was aware of Cronus breathing hotly down his neck. "Would you _stop_ breathing down my neck, it's gross?" He said irritably, but he then took a step forward and peered closely at the new arrival. "Jack?"

Jack O'Neill grinned happily at him. "Hi Daniel, how's it going? Hi Cronus long time no see. How've you been?" He waved happily and enthusiastically at the Goa'uld as though they were long lost bosom pals instead of mortal enemies.

"Dead." Cronus replied matter of factly. "You?"

"I'm on a bicycle." Jack dinged the bell. "It has a bell."

"Cool." Cronus walked up to him. "Can I ride it?"

"Sure..."

Daniel clapped his hands to his head. "No...no...no and no!" He walked up to the pair and yanked the bicycle out of Cronus' hands. "It is _not _cool and it's_ not _okay for him to ride it." He said peevishly to Jack.

"Who died and made you God?" Cronus asked with a note of annoyance in his previously cheery voice. Then he giggled. "Oh...that would be me."

"I never thought you were that mean Daniel." Jack sounded immensely disappointed. He took the bicycle back from Daniel and handed it to Cronus who clutched it possessively and started riding it up and down corridors. He was singing the Eton Boating song at the top of his voice as he did so and it echoed back until Daniel thought he would go insane with the noise.

Daniel clapped his hands to his head again and slid down the wall. "I need to wake up..." He said feverishly. "I'm not well." He became aware that Jack was standing over and looking down at him.

"Yes you _should_ wake up Daniel." Jack said seriously. "_Something_ is coming. And it isn't nice. No it isn't nice at all."

Daniel's mouth went dry at the note in Jack's voice. "What _kind _of something? And why is Cronus here? Isn't he dead? Is it something to do with him?"

Jack glanced along the corridor where Cronus was riding the bicycle round and around what looked suspiciously like a funeral bier. "Is he dead? Well, time will tell. I can't tell you what kind of something Danny, just that it's nasty. Not Goa'uld nasty although god knows they're old enough to remember this particular nasty, not even Ori nasty and the Wraith don't even come close. Cronus is the key to saving mankind."

Daniel was speechless. "Jack...who are the Ori and the Wraith? I've never heard of them. And Cronus saving mankind? _Never_ going to happen."

"That's all I can tell you." Jack turned away. "It's my turn now Cronus, turns eachies *, that's only fair."

Cronus ignored him and rode down another corridor with Jack in hot pursuit. Both of them were cackling like maniacs. Daniel jumped to his feet and ran after them. The corridor stretched out for miles in front of him and although he could hear them close by he could never quite reach them no matter how fast he ran. Each of the corridors seem to end at a central point, where the bier was. Daniel decided that if he walked to there, they would have to get to him at some point, so he started walking, passing niches in the walls which held sarcophagi. Each sarcophagi held a stone crown and the name of the occupant underneath, but he didn't recognise any of the names. In fact the writing just looked like gobbledegook.

Finally he reached the centre point. As he drew closer he could see that the bier was covered in a rich dark velvet material and that there was a body lying on it. Every nerve in his body was screaming at him to wake up, to not get any closer, but it was as if he had no control over his movements. He reached the bier and began to pull back the linen which shrouded the face of the person lying there.

To his shock and horror it was the face of his first wife that was revealed to him. Sha're lay there looking as though she had only just died. He spoke her name brokenly and reached out to touch her face. But in the true style of all horror movies her hand suddenly snaked up and caught him around the wrist. Her eyes flew open and her mouth twisted in the parody of the loving smile she had always used especially for him. Tiny pin-pricks of flame flickered in her brown eyes.

"It's here." She hissed in a cracked voice. Daniel tried to jerk his hand away but she gripped it all the harder. "_He_ is here...You will wake up, we will _all _WAKE UP...."

ooOoo

"....wake up. You are dreaming Daniel Jackson!"

Daniel's eyes slowly unglued themselves. His mouth felt as though he had spent the night in an ashtray and his head felt thick.

"Teal'c? What time is it?" He mumbled and felt blindly for his glasses. Teal'c took them off the bedside table and gently placed them on his nose. He pushed them up with a gesture that immediately reminded Daniel of Cronus in his dream. His breath caught in his throat and he struggled to sit up. "Thanks. I was having a bit of a dream."

"A bad one if your cries were any judge." The large Jaffa observed.

Daniel bit his lip. "Well it was more weird than bad when it started off. It had Cronus in it."

Teal'c raised one of his eyebrows. "Then it was indeed a bad dream Daniel Jackson."

"Yeah." In fact the Cronus of his dream had been quite nice and even vaguely helpful, but Daniel didn't think that the Jaffa would want to hear that. He looked at his alarm clock. "Teal'c it's only three in the morning, is there a problem?" He started to get out of bed, but the Jaffa shook his head.

"There is no problem Daniel Jackson. I was in kelno'reem until a short while ago, but when I completed it I thought you may be awake. I thought you may wish to talk about your experience earlier as you came through the gate. You usually work late in your laboratory, but were not there so I came along to your room intending to knock and see if you were awake. That was when I heard you crying out, so I came in and woke you. You appeared to be in distress."

Daniel managed a wan smile. "I was. Sha're was in the end of the dream. That was why I was upset." He looked up at the Jaffa. "Why did you think I would wish to talk about earlier?"

Teal'c indicated the chair. "May I sit Daniel Jackson?"

"What? Oh... of course. And you don't need to say my full name every time you know? Daniel will do."

Teal'c inclined his head and smiled tightly. "Of course. When I saw the drawing you made of the being you saw, I was reminded of something that I witnessed as a child. I thought perhaps if I spoke to you about it we could perhaps make better sense of both events."

His interest piqued, Daniel leant forward eagerly. "Really? What happened?"

ooOoo

* **Turns eachies** (_slang_)- phrase children use in the North East of England when they play a game where each needs to take a turn.


	4. Cronus through the Looking Glass

**Disclaimer: **I own none of the basic concepts of either Stargate SG1, or anything else. However all original characters do belong to me as does the basic plot for this story.

"Revenge is always the weak pleasure of a little and narrow mind."

- **Decimus Juvius Juvenal**

**Chapter Four – Cronus through the Looking Glass**

**That strange place at the end of a lost road**

_Why have they not destroyed me? _

That thought was primary in Cronus' mind as he hung inside the stasis jar. At least that's certainly what it felt like to him, although he had never actually inhabited one.

The next thought in his mind was what was the source of the power he could feel all around him? Even inside the jar he could feel it prickling his skin. The four creatures who guarded him reeked of it. He had watched as the guard was regularly changed. These were consummate warriors. The swords they carried were no toys, the blades were keen and bright, made of some metal which was both beautiful and no doubt deadly. What fascinated Cronus most of all was the fact that silver flames flickered along the edge of the blades.

The other thing that fascinated him was that the warriors leaked silver light from their eyes, but their expression was cold and uncompromising. He could appreciate that, but it didn't help him understand where he was or why he was here in this place of light.

He had been there for days, perhaps even weeks, it was difficult to tell since even with his limited access to the outside Cronus could feel that time moved differently here. Each time the guard changed no one else came with them. Cronus remembered the beautiful golden man who had imprisoned him. A prime specimen of manhood, but somehow he had known that he only saw what the man wished him to see. If Cronus had only possessed a body he would have sighed deeply at the thought of him.

A muted noise from outside the stasis jar told him that the changing of his guard had begun, only this time another besides the four guards was now standing in the chamber. If Cronus had possessed human eyesight he would probably have goggled in awe.

The being who entered the room was different to the guards. Even Cronus with his limited eyesight in symbiote form could see that. The power that had prickled before, now throbbed in painful waves and the light emanating from this being was too painful almost to bear. He thrashed inside his stasis prison and the being seemed to sense his distress for the light around him gradually muted to a bearable level, allowing the symbiote to see the being clearly for the first time.

He was tall, perhaps seven or eight feet tall and dressed in black from head to toe. Even his hair was midnight dark and hung loose around his shoulders in a shining skein of black silk. His face was stern, like the guards, but there was also great compassion in his deep set, yet bright eyes which seemed to change colour even as Cronus tried to get the measure of him. When this being looked at him Cronus felt as though his very soul was exposed.

"Is that better?" He asked the symbiote.

Cronus stared at him. How could he answer such a question without a body with vocal chords capable of forming language?

The man seemed amused. "Answer in your thoughts little one, I can hear you clearly."

"Yes it's better." Cronus couldn't keep the peevish note from his thoughts. "I _demand_ to know who you are and why I have been brought here." If he'd had nostrils Cronus would have flared them in rage.

The man laughed, a golden sound that filled the room with warmth. "Ah, _there _you are. For a moment I thought the solitude you have been in for the past few months had worn you down."

_Months? _Cronus was aghast. How had it been months? He had reckoned weeks at the very most.

"Time passes differently here to the outside." The explanation was brief and confirmed what Cronus had surmised, but the bright eyes upon Cronus seemed to expect a verbal reaction.

"Where am I? _Please_." Cronus added as an afterthought. This being was very powerful, it behoved him to try and behave in a reasonable manner. Doing so would hopefully get him some answers.

Beside which, this was the first conversation Cronus had experienced in a while apart from those he had with himself.

The man bent forward towards the jar. "You are in my halls."

Apparently being reasonable worked. "A prisoner?"

"A guest." The man smiled at him. "and I have judged that it is time for you to begin your journey."

Cronus was confused, but a small flicker of hope was born in him. "Journey? Am I going somewhere?"

"You are. You are going on a long journey through your life. You will be shown what was, what is and those things that may or may not come to pass." The man's voice took on a grim note, his mien became brighter and Cronus felt a frisson of fear. "You will relive _all _of the wrongs you committed. You will be made to face _all _of your actions, both good and bad. How _you_ deal with this will decide your ultimate fate. At the end, we will see what there is to see."

Cronus became Goa'uld again. "You presume to judge _me_?" He asked. His fury and outrage were evident.

The man's aura dimmed again and his bright, stern eyes grew compassionate. He smiled and Cronus felt himself deflate. "No child, at the end of your journey you will be judged by a sterner judge than I could _ever_ be." He said softly.

Even inside the constantly warm and comfortable environment of the stasis jar Cronus shivered. "And who is that?" He asked in a quieter tone.

"Yourself."

That one word dropped like a stone into the silence that followed.

If he had experienced this conversation before Cronus would have laughed at the notion that he would be asked to judge his own actions down through the millennia, but somehow this powerful being managed to make him understand, just by using one word, how terrifying this experience of a journey through his life could be.

Cronus mentally licked dry lips. "And when does my journey start?" He whispered.

"It has already begun child."

ooOoo

**The Tok'ra Homeworld, present day**

It seemed rather telling to Daniel Jackson that the building the Tok'ra used for their extractions was actually a pyramid. _Not so far removed from their Goa'uld kindred really,_ he thought.

The chanting had been going on for some hours by this time and Daniel found that random thought processes helped immensely with the fact that his feet were gradually going numb from all the standing still.

Out of the corner of his eye he could see that General Jack O'Neil was restless. Whatever thought processes were going on inside that head of his they certainly weren't stopping him from sighing and shifting from one foot to the other. Daniel only barely managed to hide his smile at the sight. Some things never changed, thank god, and Jack O'Neill was one of them.

Jack caught Daniel looking at him and immediately acted like a guilty child caught out at something his parents told him he wasn't to do rather than a high-ranking General currently working in the lofty Pentagon. Daniel winked knowingly and nodded at him and Jack flushed slightly around the neck area, giving a half self-deprecating smile back.

Colonel Sam Carter and Colonel Cam Mitchell dealt with the boredom of standing better than most, certainly better than Vala did for sure. Probably due to the amount of standing around to attention the military did in abundance, Daniel decided. Of course that didn't explain Jack, but Daniel wasn't sure _any _coherent explanation could be given for Jack O'Neil, he was out there in a category all of his own.

As was Teal'c, the long-standing Jaffa member of the SG1 team. Daniel glanced at the unmoved expression on the Jaffa's face. Teal'c seldom made great shows of emotion, except when talking about movies or television about which he bordered almost on the obsessive, however as Daniel watched him, covertly as he thought, Teal'c suddenly turned around and looked directly at him. Daniel felt a momentary shock as he saw an expression he had not thought to see in the Jaffa's eyes standing as he was at the execution of the last System Lord, or at least the last prominent one for sure.

Teal'c looked unsure, and a trifle concerned. It was a concern that matched Daniel;'s own. A few years had passed since their conversation had taken place in the early morning just after they had destroyed Cronus on the planet Juna. Daniel had not had any further dreams about the white city, nor had he seen Cronus again in his dreams. Jack's oblique references to the Wraith and the Ori had only sprung to the forefront of his mind when those threats appeared, but even then Daniel was so caught up in events that he didn't give it too much thought.

But now he wondered, and he wondered if Teal'c was wondering too. The Jaffa had almost perfect recall, so it was doubtful he had forgotten their conversation even it there _were _years in-between. Daniel turned his attention briefly to the chanting Tok'ra and found it amusing that in the midst of their technological thrust, these symbiotes and hosts _still_ found time for archaic ceremonies shrouded in mystery.

Jack was complaining, albeit in muted tones, but the chanting was irritating him and the standing around was irritating him even more. He didn't understand the language the chanting was in and he was bored. Vala wasn't doing much better. She had kept up an unending whispered babble that irritated Daniel far more than the chanting which had an almost somnolent effect on him. Cam Mitchell had managed to quieten that down, but Jack was a harder nut to crack.

"It's a list of his crimes Jack." Daniel leaned forward and tried to explain why the Tok'ra were doing so much chanting.

After a brief interchange between them all Jack seemed to quiet down and Daniel went back to dreamily listening as the chanting droned on. After a while he ceased to be able to differentiate between one crime and the next one, the Tok'ra could have been singing Kum Ba Yah for all he knew.

So it was a shock when the chanting came to an abrupt end. It jolted Daniel away from his musings about the strange being he had seen as he passed through the Juna gate and into the here and now.

"Oh thank _god_." Jack whispered, but his fervent gratitude echoed _all_ of their feelings on the matter. "I didn't realise we would have to stand through all that. I thought it would just be extraction and then cake."

Sam Carter fought back the giggle that threatened to erupt at Jack's comment. After all this was a solemn occasion, something they had fought for through many a year. Yet if she cared to admit it to herself, a strange part of her regretted Baal's imminent demise. Out of all of the System Lords, he and Yu had come the closest to being a Goa'uld she could work with.

Yu had, at heart, been a relatively peaceful Goa'uld in comparison with the rest. All he had really wanted was to rule his territories in such peace as he decreed and have his tea ceremonies, he had grown a little senile at the end, but she would still rather have dealt with him than the Ori or the Wraith.

Baal's dry, sardonic sense of humour had made him slightly more endearing than _any_ of the others. He seemed to have more of a handle on human nature than the rest.

She immediately pulled herself up at these thoughts. It was precisely _that_ ability of Baal's that made him the most dangerous of all of them.

She would have been astonished to discover that Cronus was the deceased System Lord on both Daniel's and Teal'c's minds. She hadn't given _him_ a thought since Janet Frasier had read out her autopsy findings on the remains they took back with them after killing him.

Thinking of Janet as a victim in the long list of Goa'uld atrocities seemed to put Sam's perspective with regard to the Goa'uld back on track. Janet was rarely far away from Sam's thoughts. They had been friends and the Goa'uld had put an abrupt end to that friendship. The Goa'uld were cruel, arrogant and dangerous, it was good that she would bear witness to the end of them. It was a fitting testimony to the life of Janet Frasier and all the other innocent victims.

"Let the extraction begin."

Daniel decided that he didn't like the look of the Tok'ra who proclaimed that the execution was to begin. It struck him that since Selmak and Martouf, most of the Tok'ra were suffering from a severe lack of personality. Their mealy-mouthed, superior attitude was starting to annoy him intensely.

Hopefully this final execution would signal the end of any in-depth interaction between them and the SGC, although their encounters _had_ become less and less as the Ori threat had become more pervasive and the Goa'uld threat, now being ruthlessly hunted by the Tok'ra _and_ the free Jaffa, had faded into the background somewhat. And more especially since the end of the Replicators.

There were now bigger enemies out there for them to deal with.

In a flash Daniel remembered Jack standing over him in that tomb. He remembered what Jack had said those many years ago. _"Yes you should wake up Daniel. Something is coming. And it isn't nice. No it isn't nice at all."_

Jack's voice echoed in his brain and he felt the same cold prickle of fear now as he had then in his dream. Something worse than the Goa'uld, the Ori or the Wraith? What in the name of all that was holy could that kind of bad be?

The sound of Baal's scream of agony rang through the chamber and bounced of the walls at him. He jerked into the present in time to see the Tok'ra hold up the container with the symbiote inside it and then fling it contemptuously to the ground where is shattered into a million pieces. The symbiote wriggled frantically for a few seconds and then lay completely still.

_The false god is dead,_ thought Daniel numbly. _Long live justice._

But was it justice really? Or was it revenge? If he was meant to feel avenged or pleased, then why did he have such a sour taste in his mouth?

And why did Teal'c have such a troubled look on his face?

Vala's voice as she decided she would stay and help Baal's poor host come to terms with his new condition seemed to come from quite far away. As did Jack's voice offering to buy lunch for everyone back on earth. Daniel, ever the member of SG1 with a huge conscience, was not filled with a sense of a job well done and rejoicing. Instead he was questioning whether their act today made them as barbarous as the Goa'uld themselves. He had not liked the muted relish with which that Tok'ra had flung that container down. Would that expression be on his face if it was a human who he perceived as an enemy he was cutting down? Daniel shuddered.

He was glad to get the dust of the Tok'ra home world off his feet. As he showered and changed, cleaned his teeth and brushed his hair ready to go for his free lunch from Jack, he reflected that no amount of showering had actually made him feel clean and no amount of teeth brushing could get that sour taste out of his mouth nor the huge looming doubt out of this mind.

This was not the end, _this_ was just the beginning.

ooOoo

**The Halls of the Dead, somewhere at the end of the lost road.**

"How do you feel?"

For a moment Cronus did not understand the question. He had just watched in growing horror as Baal was wrenched from his host and contemptuously flung to the floor where he expired amidst the smashed remains of the container holding him after extraction.

He had a myriad of feelings coursing through him, pity, regret, anger, rage and disbelief. He wasn't sure which of them took precedence over the others. His eyes were not capable of crying tears, but a huge part of him was crying.

Crying? Why? Why should he feel pity in death for a creature he had felt nothing for in life? He was confused. Why had they shown him this? He did not understand how it was meant to help him understand himself in any way, unless of course the aim was to show him what would happen to him were he to take another host.

"I don't know." He finally admitted. "I care, but I don't know why. I felt anger and outrage, yet there is no reason why I should feel such things. He did many terrible things. We _all_ did. He deserved his end."

_Or did he?_ That disquieting thought followed, but was not uttered.

"Does _any_ living creature deserve such an end?" The voice was quiet.

Cronus was silent for a moment. "I believe that there are many, if not most of those who came into contact with us who think that we do."

"And what do _you_ think?" The voice persisted.

Cronus had no arms to bury his head in so he writhed in anguish and frustration. "I don't know!" He practically yelled at the being he had come think of as his tormentor, even though no actual torture took place except in his own mind. He let out something close to a sob. "I just don't know, not any more."

The being said nothing.

"How can this help me to understand what and who I am or decide my fate? How is this helping me?" He cried in anguish.

"You will understand that and much more in time child. Try to be patient little one, you are making great progress."

With that the begin left him as abruptly as he had appeared. Left him to his own tumultuous thoughts and his four silent guardians.

After a while Cronus gave way to his distress and anguish. He howled it to the heavens, to anyone who would listen. And if they heard the cries of distress, his four guardians did not show it. They remained motionless and stern at their posts.

ooOoo


	5. Past conversations revisited

**Disclaimer: **I own none of the basic concepts of either Stargate SG1, or anything else. However all original characters do belong to me as does the basic plot for this story.

"Hindsight is a double-edged sword. Too much of it and the past seems inevitable,

yet with too little hindsight, a panoramic perspective is impossible." **-**

**LANCE B. KURKE, _The Wisdom of Alexander the Great_**

**Chapter Five – Past conversations revisited**

**Stargate Command, Post Baal, circa present day**

Colonel Sam Carter sighed as she stepped through the gate and into the Gateroom from their latest mission. Was it her imagination or were all the missions now fairly standard and extremely painless? Maybe even a tad boring?

The Goa'uld were gone, the Ori were defeated, of course the Wraith were still somewhat of a problem, but elsewhere all was peaceful. A little too peaceful maybe.

She immediately mentally scolded herself for thinking such thoughts. They had fought long and hard to achieve this kind of peace in the galaxy. Exploring new gate addresses now was their main mission, along with making new friends and ensuring that galactic wide peace held. Her chest constricted a little as her father's face popped into her mind. How she would have loved it if he could have lived to see all this and how unfair that he had been taken away from her.

She wasn't entirely sure why she was still part of the team really, but in spite of the welcome change of commanding the Atlantis project, this was where she truly felt at home. Many a change of appointment had been suggested, but all would have taken her away from the gate travel. She had seen first-hand how restless Jack had become and how he used any excuse to absent himself from the Pentagon, if she took on a similar role and the promotion that would come with it, that restlessness would infect her too. One day she would have to give in, but this was _not _that day.

Still a little excitement wouldn't hurt. Would it?

Really?

_Just be careful what you wish for Sam._ She immediately tried to dismiss her father's amused voice in her head. _You might just get it._

Daniel was acting quiet again. At first she had thought it was because their gate missions had quietened down. Danger abounded less and he was more able to carry out the job of resident linguist and archaeologist for the team without constantly having to be on alert or worried about getting killed. However on this last mission she kept inadvertently intercepting Teal'c and Daniel exchanging looks, almost as if they both had the same thing on their minds yet neither couldn't think of a good way of introducing the conversation.

"Penny for 'em Colonel." Cam's joking voice interrupted her reverie.

Sam coloured slightly and laughed. "I'm not sure they're worth that much_ Colonel_." She said slyly.

Vala bounced past her, those silly bunches of hers flapping up and down on her shoulders. "I find _that _hard to believe. All that quantum stuff in your head would be worth something to _someone_ out there." She flapped her hand in the vague direction of the Stargate. "What's everyone doing tonight? Anything interesting?"

There was a general shaking of heads. Teal'c merely grunted and headed for his quarters in his usual stately, unhurried fashion.. Cam got a 'deer caught in the headlights' hunted expression on his face and sprinted after him.

Daniel followed them both without answering Vala, he had a thoughtful expression on his face. That just left Sam to answer, feeling, as she always did, that it was her job to make up for the lack of responses of the other team members. She rolled her eyes mentally. It really was _too_ bad of them. Cam was probably going to lock himself in his quarters and watch his favourite sport. Teal'c would meditate as he always did and Daniel would shut himself away with his research, as he always did these days. Eventually all three would end up in the Rec room with a couple of large pizzas, some beers and in Daniel's case, a bottomless coffee urn.

For some reason it had ended up that Sam and Vala as the two female members were expected to bond. If she was honest with herself Sam would rather have either gone to her own lab to do some research and writing in her own field or perhaps joined the men with the sport, beer and pizza. She really had nothing whatsoever in common with her female team mate, most of the time they rubbed along fairly amicably, but they were not bosom pals. Not in the same way she had been with Janet Frasier.

Vala was an inimitable, bubbly creature, full of curiosity and quirky to a fault in everything she did. Sam tended to think of her as an airhead most of the time and would half dismiss her unending rambling to the back of her mind as white noise. Then, when everyone was least expecting it, Vala would make a statement so informed, so relevant to the matter at hand and so rational that everyone would just freeze in shock.

And then she would spoil it a second later by asking one of them if they liked her new hairdo or whether it mattered that she was wearing odd socks that day.

She was an enigma and Sam wasn't sure that she wanted to spend that evening trying to figure the enigma out. Her heart sank as she could see from Vala's expression that she was going to suggest some kind of girl's night out.

She decided to circumvent the suggestion before Vala smacked her with it right between the eyes. "Well I should go. I have _so_ much work to do, reports to write and...other stuff, I really must go, shower and get stuck into it." She groaned to herself when she saw Vala's slightly hurt expression and back-pedalled a little. "But perhaps we could get together later for a coffee or something?"

Vala's expression immediately brightened again and she fell into step as they walked towards their respective quarters. "That would be wonderful. I forgot to tell you that when we were on that last planet I saw......"

Her voice trailed away, babbling enthusiastic inconsequentialities until it just became a dull buzz at the back of Sam's mind. She was already thinking about a particularly interesting piece of research she had started and which had not been completed due to various things like being in command of the SGC and Atlantis and trying to rid the world of its nasties. It would be satisfying to get her teeth into something like that. Her mood lightened and so did her step.

Sam wasn't even sure when Vala left her to head into her own quarters. She was vaguely aware that she must have seemed rather rude not saying good night or anything and considered knocking on the door to correct her rudeness, but knowing Vala she would only get dragged into the room and subjected to more babble, so she shrugged instead. The delights of quantum physics were awaiting and it could be a jealous lover.

However when she reached her quarters and booted up her computer, there was an email message from General Hank Landry asking her to call him once she had returned from the mission. Once the call was ended, she sat back chewing on her lip. Her head was buzzing with excitement.

She was getting her own command. Of course the information was unofficial until she received new orders, but she was going to get the command of the new Daedalus class ship named after General Hammond.

She started to grin and found she couldn't stop. Perhaps that research would be put on to the back burner for a little longer. Life was about to get _very_ interesting indeed.

Neither she nor anyone else connected with the Stargate or Atlantis program could ever have known just exactly _how_ interesting.

ooOoo

**Dr Daniel Jackson's laboratory/office, SGC, Cheyenne Mountain**

"_Daaaaanny._ "

The voice cooed close to his ear and hot breath blew on his cheek. He frowned and swatted his hand around to fend whoever it was off and tried to fall back asleep.

"Go 'way." He mumbled. "I'm sleeping."

"I bet you say that to ALL the girls."

There was sly laughter in the voice and Daniel raised his head from the desk and myopically stared around him. He had obviously fallen asleep sometime while researching. His computer screen's steady light was the only illumination in his laboratory apart from a small desk lamp. A sheaf of papers had been knocked to the floor and lay about the room.

He groped blindly for his glasses which he had either removed or had fallen off his nose, but to no avail.

"Looking for these?"

Daniel peered at the speaker, desperately trying to focus on the features of the blurred figure half sitting, half lounging on a tall stool by his bench. He made a grab for the glasses hanging casually from the figure's thumb and forefinger.

"_Whatever_ happened to good manners." The voice was filled with mock severity, but Daniel did vaguely recognise it. "Say pretty please."

"Look _whoever_ you are, this not funny. Let me have the glasses...._please_. If Cam or Vala have put you up to this I will get them back for it, you can let them know that."

The figure chuckled. "I have no idea who Cam is, but the name Vala is vaguely familiar. Wasn't she a host to a Goa'uld at some point?"

Daniel jumped to his feet. He made another grab for the glasses but this time the figure possessing them let them go. He put them on, wishing that he had still been wearing contacts, but he preferred to take them off at night and wear his specs. The face of his tormentor swam into focus.

"Oh god, not you." He waggled his hand at Cronus as if to see whether he was really there and managed to grab a lock of hair.

"Hey! Ow! Watch the hair. Do you know how long it takes me to get it like this?" Cronus ducked his perfectly coiffed head away from Daniel's hand. "What the hell are you trying to achieve anyway?"

Daniel stared at the disgruntled former and deceased System Lord in shock. "Oh my god, you're really here." He poked at Cronus' chest just to make sure he was solid.

"Well..." Cronus said moving well out of poking range. "That really all depends on what you mean by 'here' doesn't it? Anyway, how've you been Danny boy? Long time no see. And quit the poking please, don't touch what you can't afford."

"Don't _call_ me that." Daniel backed away to the door and pushed repeatedly on a red button, just above the light switch. "I don't know how you are here, but the guard will be here very shortly and you have some explaining to do."

Cronus looked remarkably unimpressed by this show of bravado, instead he peered at the computer screen and experimentally jabbed a few keys. "Still on these tablets Danny? I thought someone of your massive intellect would have translated them by now. I'm no genius, but the meaning seems clear to me."

Daniel warred between staying by the door in comparative safety and rushing over to the computer to stop Cronus from messing up his research. However his curiosity won out. "What do you mean? There's a whole section that's obliterated right in the middle. None of it makes sense without the missing symbols."

He glanced over his shoulder into the corridor which should have been filling up with armed soldiers.

"They're not coming Danny boy." Cronus grinned at him, but somehow it didn't look quite as feral as it had all those years ago. Instead it had a cheeky, almost engaging edge to it. "Watch..."

Before Daniel could tackle him, Cronus had leapt into the corridor and was busy jumping up and down, waving his arms and shouting "Help, help!" at the top of his voice.

Nobody came. Cronus stopped making a racket and resumed reading the computer screen. He kept glancing down at Daniel's notes and then back up at the screen. Daniel hesitated in the doorway.

"Is this another dream?"

Cronus looked up. "Dream? No, not really. I _am_ here...sort of. Think of me more as a vision, happening to you in slowed down time. Your soldiers and the other people in this corridor are here, they just can't see either of us." He shrugged. "To them when they look into your laboratory, all they can see is you sleeping like a baby on your desk and perhaps... drooling a little. They have no idea that you are pounding your little alarm button, nor did they hear me."

Daniel forgot his fear and felt intrigued instead. "I do not drool!" He started and then thought better of getting into another slanging match. "Okay...so why _are_ you here?"

Cronus tapped a key and the picture changed. He started to insert symbols on the model of the tablet on the screen and then hit enter. Immediately the model started to rearrange itself. Cronus turned the screen with the final result towards Daniel who, fascinated in spite of himself, leant closer to read it.

The complete writing on the tablet sat there on the screen. All the missing symbols were there. Daniel's mouth dropped open and Cronus bobbed a mock curtsey. "Say thank you Cronus."

"What did you do?"

Cronus gave the question some thoughtful consideration for a second. "Well, you were taking so darned long to translate it, I thought a little assistance might be in order?"

"Well _excuse_ me, we have been a little busy lately you know." Daniel was stung into replying.

"I know, I know." Cronus patted him awkwardly on the shoulder. "And you all did _so_ well...apart from the whole symbiote wrenching thing of course. Not entirely sure I approve of that, but typical of the Tok'ra if you know what I mean. Why do something quickly and less painful when you can chant everybody into a coma and then rip host and symbiote apart as the piece de resistance?"

All Daniel could do was sputter at his unwanted guest who laughed even harder.

"Oh this is _so_ much fun. I don't get out a lot these days you know." Cronus bounced up and down on the balls of his feet.

"Oh yeah." Daniel said sardonically. "Because we are having _so _much fun aren't we? Wait....get out of where? What do you mean? Where are you? Are you alive?"

Cronus grinned at him and blithely ignored the last four questions. "Well _I_ am having fun, even if you aren't. But I'm being told it's time to go...so..." He jerked his thumb at the computer. "You might want to save that information now before I go, because once I do, who knows?"

He winked at Daniel and started to fade. Daniel leapt forward. "No.." He shouted. "Don't go, don't..."

But it was too late. Daniel only just managed to hit the save button before he was awoken, once again, by the gentle nudging of Teal'c who was bending over him.

Daniel sat up and feverishly searched for the file that had been open on the computer. Watched by a puzzled and concerned Jaffa, he found it and poised his trembling hand holding the mouse with its pointer over it.

Teal'c blinked and stared at him.

Daniel double clicked and opened the file.

There it was. A complete version of the tablets that he had been taking so long to translate with all the missing symbol. He slumped back in his chair and huffed a huge sigh. It was then that he noticed the bold, dark writing on his notepad. A shiver ran up his spine when he saw what Cronus had written.

"Is there something wrong Daniel Jackson?" Teal'c soft voice intruded.

Daniel shook his head numbly. "No, Cronus just added the missing symbols on the tablet I was finding so hard to decipher for me and he left me a note."

He turned the note book round so the Jaffa could see it. Written on the book in a large and distinctive flowing hand was the word '**Tengwar**' and then **'Dummy'**, written after it.

Teal'c frowned. "I do not understand the meaning of this word Daniel Jackson. It is not in any language I have seen, and I have seen many. Although I _am_ aware what the word Dummy means."

Daniel ignored the reference to Dummy. "I doubt you would have seen this language Teal'c. You see for many scholars, it's a made up language, something invented for an epic tale." He reached out and gently touched the image on the screen. "It's not supposed to exist at all and certainly no Goa'uld System Lord, living or dead would either know it or be able to speak it. But I think Cronus could."

"Cronus is dead Daniel Jackson." Teal'c tried to speak reprovingly, but there was also a note of uncertainty. "His appearances are only in your dreams."

"Are they?" Daniel wrote underneath the bold letters Cronus had scribbled on the page. "Does that look like my writing?"

Teal'c shifted uncomfortably. "I agree that the writing is similar to that which I have seen on some Goa'uld documents when I was First Prime to Apophis, they were from Cronus, but could you not have written this yourself unconsciously? The meaning of these tablets has been eluding you for some time."

Daniel sighed. "So you think that because I'm stumped by them, that I sub-consciously made myself find an answer by dreaming Cronus up?"

"I do not know." Teal'c replied calmly. "But it may be wise to consider that option." He turned the screen towards him. "This language is called Tengwar?"

Daniel felt a rumble of excitement worm its way from his gut up into his stomach. "I believe so, but I need to do some research into Tengwar before I can translate it."

Teal'c raised an eyebrow. "You now have to learn how to translate the translation?"

Daniel was already at the bookshelf and reaching for reference books. He also pulled down a much thumbed, but tattered thick book that looked very much like a novel to the Jaffa.

"I think so." Excitement gleamed in his eyes when he turned to Teal'c. "And I don't think Cronus was a dream. I think he's real and being sent to me as some kind of wacky vision. He's trying to help me in his own very weird way. I know you probably think I am crazy, but I truly believe that Cronus is either coming from beyond, or he is alive somewhere."

Teal'c stared at Daniel for a moment, then he stooped down and picked something up from where it was lying on the floor beside one of the tall stools at the desk.

He held it up. "I believe you Daniel Jackson."

Daniel's mouth dropped open in shock. Between the Jaffa's strong fingers hung a rich brown fur cloak in the middle of which were two large holes with singe marks on the edges.

A smell of burnt dog hair wafted gently around the laboratory.

ooOoo


	6. Revelations

**Note to Readers: **No doubt you will guess at the end of this which other work this is a crossover with. My not mentioning it before is deliberate as I wanted to gradually build up the background. I also did not want to detract from Stargate SG1 or their characters as the main thrust and plot of this story is primarily set in the Stargate universe and _not_ in Middle Earth. All the SG1 characters will play a full part in the story.

**Disclaimer: **I own none of the basic concepts of either Stargate SG1, or anything else. However all original characters do belong to me as does the basic plot for this story. Excerpts and character from the works of Tolkien belong solely to the Tolkien Estates. The professor belongs to himself.

"An idea, to be suggestive, must come to the individual with the force of revelation." **-**

**William James **

**Chapter Six - Revelations**

"Did you enjoy that?"

The being sitting calmly in front of the stasis jar sounded hugely amused.

Cronus was quite used to having these conversations now, given that they had been happening for some years as measured by normal time. "Yes, I think he is beginning to like me."

Although the smirk could not be seen with the naked eye, it was there in his tone. The being laughed softy but said nothing.

"I think he finds my intrusion into his life confusing." Cronus continued. "I always found him rather irritating the few times I met him. He speaks too quickly. It's as though his brain moves too fast for his speech to catch up."

"He suffered great pain under the actions of your kind." The being said thoughtfully.

"Yes. His wife unfortunately became the Queen of Apophis and was subsequently killed. Apophis greatly enjoyed the taking of the host. He liked to watch the subjugation." There was a note of distaste in Cronus' voice that did not escape the being.

"Yet _you_ did not enjoy that part. Why?"

The question was a simple one, but the answer started a complex chain of thought in Cronus. Thinking about things to do with his own life and feelings in depth had not come easily to him. Like most Goa'uld he had not tended to think his actions through. They were always as a direct result of an immediate desire.

"I chose my hosts carefully." He said cautiously. "In the ten thousand years that I existed, I only ever had two hosts. The first was chosen for me by my sire. I was young and struggled greatly for dominance over the host who was also young and impetuous. I was also foolish and greatly ambitious. With concentration I managed to overcome the fury of my host at being taken, but my actions were not well thought out. My ambition brought me into direct conflict with my sire. I was not operating from a strong position, my Jaffa army was still small in numbers. There was a battle and my host was injured beyond my ability to repair him. We were found by one of the humans of the planet of the Tau'ri, a soldier in one of their ancient armies. Thinking that I was one of the Gods from Olympus brought down by magic, he set his physicians and priests to try and heal us, but the injuries were too great. One of the physicians was an erudite man, a human with great knowledge, unmarried and dedicated to his art. He was also curious. When I expelled myself on my host's demise, he would have studied me." Cronus shrugged. "Technologically he could not have preserved me, the Greeks were not advanced enough at the time, so I seized the opportunity and took him as my new host. He was not unwilling. There was no subjugation."

"You studied him while he was trying to save your host's life and decided that he would make a good host?" There was no emotion in the being's tone of voice, no judgement, no distaste.

"Yes. He was an educated, rational and mature human with no family and no ties." Cronus admitted. "I thought he would make a good host and I was right. His name was Appollonius." He felt a sudden rush of sadness.

"You communicated with him. Is it not the usual way of the Goa'uld to subjugate the host completely?"

"Yes we communicated and no, my relationship with my host was _not _the Goa'uld way, but none knew of it. He was, as I said an educated, rational human. He tempered my youthful arrogance and taught me much..._when_ I allowed him to. He did not deserve the end he was given." Again the rush of sadness.

"How do you feel?"

Cronus sighed. "You _always_ ask me that."

"Because it is _always_ relevant. How do you feel?" The being repeated the question.

"I miss him." Cronus reached inside himself and again found the huge well of emptiness left behind when his host had died. "I did not want to leave him lying there in the mud to be reviled and spat on by those who came to rejoice at my death, but I had no choice but to expel myself. One of your people plucked me from his still warm body but I did not wish to leave him there."

"You grieve for him." Again a simple question, but this time it only required a simple answer.

"Yes. I grieve for my loss."

"In the end they treated him with dignity and interred him in the way of his kind. The mortal Dr Jackson researched the burial rites appertaining to his time on earth and they were read over him as he was sent back to the earth from whence he came. Does this bring you comfort?"

Cronus felt a spear of pain rather than comfort at the thought. He thrashed in distress in the stasis jar. He could feel the being's compassion rolling over him in waves.

"Would it comfort you to know that his soul is here in my halls and that he bears you no ill will? Quite the contrary in fact." The being persisted.

Cronus calmed a little and his curiosity emerged. "How...how can this be?"

But even as he asked the question he knew that his current place of residence was also a staging post for the souls of the dead. Not so long ago he would have laughed at the notion that the souls of beings lived on after death, but now...now was different. He had learned much here. His guards still guarded him, but others, un-fleshed essences of a once-living person, occasionally now drifted in and out of his 'room', as he thought of it now.

Cronus wasn't exactly sure when his prison had become a room, but it had, and the outward indication of that had been the guards who, although vigilant,_ had _relaxed slightly. The stern expressions of before were now more open and they even smiled sometimes when Cronus and the 'being' had their therapy sessions as Cronus jokingly called them.

The one thing that Cronus had grown to like about his situation was the aura of peace and calm that surrounded him here. A peace only broken by the being's gentle interrogation of him. Then things about his life and his feelings came to light that were anything but peaceful. He had come to understand that the being was not his interrogator. If anything, Cronus himself was his own interrogator. The being merely facilitated the soul-searching.

"I am pleased." Cronus said sadly. "Is he allowed to see me?"

The being's expression turned regretful and he shook his head in negation. "He is the soul of a mortal man, this part of my halls is not a place for him. Soon, when he is ready, he will move on to his rightful place beyond the bounds of the mortal universe."

"But the others I have seen. _They_ are allowed here. Are they not mortal? They died did they not?" Cronus was confused again.

The being smiled. "Ah, yes, the souls of the Children, they are curious about you, a creature, such as they have never seen before, who is alive and yet in the Halls of the Dead. It has been explained to them that you are under judgement, but they know naught else. Have they spoken yet?"

"No, when they come into the room the guards allow them to investigate and then they are sent on their way. They do not communicate with me. They are children?"

The being laughed this time. "No not in the terms that you understand as children, they are the souls of those we refer to as 'the Children', who die and are awaiting rebirth. Their kind do not move on after death. They are bound to this place until the end time. Most were adults when they died. There are few here now, most have left my halls, which pleases me. But there are some who will never leave, they would not deal with rebirth well.." His expression then darkened with displeasure which deepened Cronus' curiosity as this being rarely showed that side of his nature. "...and there are those who _cannot_ leave. Their actions in life were far too dangerous and too dreadful for them to be allowed to leave. Their reparation is too slow and some do not regret any of their actions and are defiant. When the end time comes they will be judged by one much greater than I."

The being's whole attitude was of profound sadness and in spite of wanting to ask about rebirth and why the Children were different to humans like Appollonius, Cronus decided that he would not pursue the line of questions if it caused this powerful entity to feel such obvious pain. Yet still the being seemed to know of his decision.

"Thank you child. Your sensitivity to my feelings is noted by my brethren and I and is much welcomed. You have indeed come far. Soon perhaps we will allow the souls of the Children in these Halls to speak to you, but not quite yet. You still have some way to travel on your journey." The being inclined his head to Cronus, de-materialised from the room and the guards resumed their positions inside near the stasis jar.

Cronus sighed deeply again. He had come to greatly enjoy these sessions and felt regret when they ended. Afterwards he felt lighter and although the shadows still encroached and the cries of his victims still rang in his head as he knew they always would, he knew that he was gradually feeling different.

He settled down into his usual position of inward searching. He required no food, the pulsating light that he hung in seemed to provide all that was necessary. Before this he had felt naked without a host body to protect him, but now all he felt was unencumbered. He had pondered many times as to whether this was how symbiotes were meant to feel, but had not yet drawn up sufficient courage to ask..

However this time, as he settled himself into one of the inevitable periods of reflection, he became aware that one of his guards was watching him. He turned his attention outwards and sent out a tentative query with his mind. To his utter amazement, the guard inclined his fair head and smiled enigmatically at him. His bright eyes twinkled with laughter.

It was the first time_ anyone i_n this place besides the being who was his guide had deliberately acknowledged his presence.

That was the point at which Cronus realised for the first time that it was not his captors who were changing their opinion of _him_. _He _was changing his opinion of himself.

ooOoo

**Mission Briefing, SGC Cheyenne Mountain 0800 hours Zulu**

Dr Daniel Jackson was late. SG1 comprising Colonels Sam Carter and Cam Mitchell, Teal'c and Vala were all sitting in their usual seats around the table, General Landry was standing behind his chair wearing his leather jacket and drinking coffee out of his favourite mug.

Sam kept throwing anxious looks in the direction of the General whose constantly calm demeanour worried her a lot. She was more of a politically correct Air Force officer than either Cam or Jack had been. She tried to go by the book when it came to correct behaviour towards a senior officer and Landry's seeming casual 'thoroughly nice guy' way of commanding really really worried her. Despite being a full bird Colonel she still needed to know where she stood with senior officers and even a few years of being part of a team commanded by a thoroughly unorthodox Commanding Officer like Jack O'Neil had not cured her of a desire to be the perfect military officer. A lot of that was down to being a woman in one of the last bastions of male dominance.

To be fair to General Landry _he_ wasn't actually annoyed at Daniel. Daniel Jackson was a civilian and as such he was allowed a few eccentricities such as being slightly late for briefings and then rushing in with his laptop balanced precariously on top of three files covered in coffee stain rings, two of which Landry knew were marked Top Secret, his hair ruffled and shedding paper as he went.

Just as he was doing that morning.

Teal'c rose from his seat and started collecting the paper dropped in Daniel's haphazard wake, while Vala rolled her eyes and Cam shook his head in mock despair and continued to snap his pencil in ever smaller pieces. As the Jaffa stalked back to his seat and placed the pile of paper on the table he was followed by the General's Adjutant who handed him another pile of paper that Daniel had shed throughout the outer office. Teal'c inclined his head in thanks and the Adjutant shut the door firmly behind him.

"Thanks Teal'c." Daniel spoke without turning around. He was busy connecting his laptop up to the LCD projector.

Cam's muffled groan at the sight of the bulky folders and laptop was cut off mid-glare from the General, but they _all_ knew they were in for one of Daniel's special briefings. Obviously he had made a breakthrough on whatever he was working on and was about to brief them on it. If Jack had been present he would already have gone into open-eyed sleep mode. For her part, now Daniel was here and the General didn't look _too_ mad, she could go into her perky 'I'm all ears' mode.

Vala satisfied herself with doodling idly all over the pad she was meant to take notes on. Sam hid s smile at the sight. She couldn't help thinking that Vala and Jack would make quite a good pair...of what she wasn't entirely sure, but they both had a low boredom threshold and that quirky unpredictability.

Daniel finished the setting up and pushed his glasses up his nose. He opened up a series of files, but brought one up to the top. It was a photograph of an elderly man and underneath it said 'Professor John Ronald Reuel Tolkien'.

"Wasn't he the guy who made the Lord of the Rings Trilogy in New Zealand?" Cam asked with a wink at Sam who grinned widely. She knew what was coming next.

As predictable as ever when it came to movies,Teal'c turned to him. "_That _was Peter Jackson Colonel Mitchell."

"Oh." Sam dissolved into muffled giggles and even the General smiled and shook his head.

Daniel cleared his throat. "Professor J R R Tolkien, Merton Professor of English Language and Literature at Merton College, Oxford, England until his retirement in 1959 started out in his first job with the Oxford Dictionary where he worked on the history and etymology of the origin of Germanic words. However, he is better known for his creation of an entire alternative world and a language to go with it. The world was that of Arda or Middle Earth allegedly based on our earth and he wrote a history for a time which is _believed_ to be mythical in which he set an epic tale involving Elves, mythical beasts and mortal man. The language he created was called Tengwar which in his fictional works was a language created by the Elf Feanor who was the first son born to a Noldorin King called Finwe."

Whatever they had all been expecting, this wasn't it. He now had the attention of everyone around the table.

"This is all very fascinating Dr Jackson, but how does a work of fiction relate to what we do here in Stargate Command?" General Landry interrupted him.

Daniel flushed. "I was getting to that General." He clicked the mouse and the picture changed to that of the tablets they had brought back from P3A-884 a few years earlier. He pointed at the image on the screen and brought up another image in a split screen so they sat side by side. "The language on these tablets from planet P3A-884 is the same as this." He pointed at the carefully drawn letters and symbols on the other image. "They are _both _Tengwar."

They were all silent for a moment, but they could all clearly see that the symbols matched each other.

Sam cleared her throat. "How is that possible?"

"Good question." Murmured the General. " As I recall P3A-884 was originally occupied by the Goa'uld wasn't it? They either killed the indigenous population or took them as slaves. By the time we arrived there the planet had been deserted for some time."

Daniel nodded. "Yes. The interesting thing about this planet is that it was smack bang in the middle of Cronus' territories under the Lordship of one of his Goa'uld underlords called, of all things, Cernunnos."

Landry took another sip of coffee. "Wasn't Cronus the System Lord you killed with the help of android doubles? Planet called Juna if I remember correctly."

"Correct again General. However we have no evidence that Cronus himself visited P3A-884 although I imagine he probably did. Cernunnos was one of his most trusted underlords, the closest thing he had to a friend and a Goa'uld who seems to have disappeared without trace. We don't know why he abandoned the planet, but given that it was on the border of territories belonging to Nirrti, I imagine that it was constantly under dispute. It may be that Cronus decided to cut his losses and pulled Cernunnos and his Jaffa out because the planet had been stripped of everything useful to him. All this is only supposition though since nothing we found on the planet gives any kind of documentary evidence to this being the reason. All we found were some ruins and the tablets."

"Written in an imaginary language created by an elderly British professor." Landry finished for him. "So I guess _you _believe we need to know why."

Cam put one finger up. "Cernunnos was a fan of Lord of the Rings?"

Laughter rippled around the table from everyone except Teal'c who stared reprovingly at Cam. "I would think not Colonel Mitchell, since the planet was abandoned long before the Professor was even born."

Cam grinned at him. "I was kidding Teal'c. I knew that."

Landry stood up and peered closer at the large screen. "Certainly looks the same. And since the Professor is unlikely to have visited P3A-884 before we did I take it we are assuming that this Tengwar is _not_ an imaginary language made up by him."

"But sir, if we assume that then we can only assume that the world the Professor was writing about was actually real, with real people and a real language as told to him by someone who knew the history. But who could have told him about it?" Sam asked.

"There _is_ only one person, if you think about it logically." Vala put her oar in. "It had to be this Cernunnos guy. After all, the tablets came from buildings he had built. After leaving the planet he could have come back to earth where he met this professor person and told him tales which perhaps led to the idea for the story. That would explain why he disappeared. Maybe he's still here?"

Landry shook his head. "It's all a bit too pat for me. There has to be something else. Maybe the symbols are just similar but are not exactly the same. Do we have any idea as to a translation Dr Jackson?"

Daniel smiled triumphantly. "I translated part of the tablet last night using the Tengwar notes written by the Professor. This part appears to be some sort of poetry and translated into English it reads...

Snow-white! Snow-white! O lady clear!  
O Queen beyond the Western Seas!  
O light to us that wander here  
Amid the world of woven trees!  
Gilthoniel! O Elbereth!  
Clear are thy eyes and bright thy breath!  
Snow-white! Snow-white! We sing to thee  
In a far land beyond the sea  
O stars that in the Sunless Year  
With shining hand by her were sown  
In windy fields now bright and clear  
We see your silver blossom blown!  
O Elbereth! Gilthoniel!  
We still remember, we who dwell  
In this far land beneath the trees  
Thy starlight on the Western seas

The last two lines in the stanza are actually in another language also attributed to the Professor, called Sindarin. I took the translation of these directly from his work. A Elbereth Gilthoniel o menel palan-díriel le nallon sí di'nguruthos A tiro nin, fanuilos! "

Silence had fallen over the room after Daniel had spoken the words of the translation.

"That's rather beautiful." Sam said softly. "But with it mentioning queens I wonder if they were singing in praise of a Goa'uld queen perhaps?"

Daniel shook his head. "All I know of Elbereth is that she was thought of almost _as_ a Goddess by the Elves. In the book they sang to her at the end of an evening. According to another work by the Professor, she was the Lady Varda Elentari, Lady of Starlight and one of the Valar who were more or less the equivalent of angels and did not think of themselves as gods. She was purported to have created the stars in the heavens."

Vala immediately found herself to be the focus of attention at the mention of the word 'Valar'.

"Don't look at me." She protested. "I have no idea if my parents named me Vala after these Valar people. I never heard of them. Anyway she sounds remarkably like a Goa'uld to me." Vala pursed her lips. "Creating stars, goddess, it all fits don't you think?"

"It does beg the question of why an ode to this lady was written in an imaginary language on a tablet found on a Goa'uld Planet." Mused the General. "She could have been the queen of this Cronus I suppose. It would make sense that words honouring her could have been carved somewhere as an act of homage."

Teal'c stared at the General. "The Queen of Cronus was called Rhea, General Landry. I have never heard her referred to in such complimentary terms as were written in that song. She was however, cruel beyond belief. Cronus did much to please her. I believe your Tau'ri saying would be 'he bent over backwards'. There were many Goa'uld who wondered why he endured her as his consort since she clearly had no loyalty to her Lord. However she craved much power and Cronus was undoubtedly powerful."

"Did she take over his territories after his death?" Enquired the General.

Sam shook her head. "No, we don't believe so. We couldn't go back through the gate after Cronus was killed because it was disabled by person or persons unknown. We thought perhaps there had been some retribution against the people of Juna for the death of Cronus, but when the Tok'ra sent a ship, they found that all was well. Nobody from Cronus' people had been back. The elders said they _had_ received a visit from someone who offered them help just after we left. They thought that the help had come from here which of course it didn't. This person also apparently disabled the gate. The Tok'ra could find nothing wrong with it, but the gate simply wouldn't work any more. When the Tok'ra contacted us, they advised against further interference. By that time Nirrti had annexed a good three quarters of Cronus' territories. It's doubtful that she would have concerned herself with Juna. There was nothing there of any use. No naquadah deposits or any other mineral. So we just let it go at that and left them in peace." She shrugged.

"An unknown person came and offered them help." Cam steepled his hands on the table. "I don't suppose there is any connection between that and these Tengwar tablets, but it might tie up a few loose ends in the file trying to find out who that person actually was. Perhaps a trip by ship to visit the people of Juna since the gate doesn't work? Maybe _they _can fill in some blanks."

Daniel leant forward eagerly. "We could do that, but I was also thinking that another trip back to P3A-884 might provide some answers to the mystery of the symbols. There has to be more there that we can find now that we know the root of the language."

The General sighed. "The way I see it, the information you have just shown us is rather fascinating, but how does it further the Stargate program in any way? If this woman in the ode is just another Goa'uld, then it's more than likely that she is dead by now, since we witnessed the death of the last System Lord a few days ago. Then again, if she_ isn't_ a Goa'uld, then could she and these Valar be Ancients? And could the man you saw as you came through the gate from Juna, presumably the guy who also disabled the gate also be an Ancient? I suppose they're both worth investigating for that reason alone. We may find something that could aid the Atlantis people in their Ancient research."

Daniel looked up in surprise at the reference to his vision just before he stepped through the Juna gate.

"It was all in the report Dr Jackson." Landry said evenly. "It might surprise you to know that before I took this job I read every single mission report. They gave me a good all round view of the work and the people who did it. Absorbing reading I might say."

He got up from the chair and paced over to the window overlooking the Gateroom. Everyone sat waiting for his final decision. Eventually he turned around.

"Okay Dr Jackson, let's put this thing to bed if we can. You can have your trip to P3A-884. I suggest you take Teal'c and Vala with you." He looked at Sam and Cam. "You and Colonel Carter visit Juna and speak to the elders. See what information you can gather about the man who visited them and disabled the gate. Since the Juna gate is not working, I will arrange a ride on the Daedalus for you both. Dismissed."

As the team headed out for their various assignments, the General called Sam Carter back. "Stay behind for a moment would you Colonel Carter? I need to talk to you."

Sam nodded and caught Mitchell by the arm as he was about to head down to the locker room. "I'll be along as soon as I've spoken to the General Cam."

Mitchell shrugged. "Sure. We'll probably have to gate to the planet nearest to where the Daedalus is on patrol anyway I guess."

Sam nodded and followed General Landry back into his office.

Mitchell stared after them with a puzzled look on his face. _Something _was going on there. He shrugged to himself, no doubt Sam would enlighten them all eventually.

"Close the door please Colonel." Hank Landry smiled at Sam. "You'll no doubt be delighted to know that I have some sealed orders here for you. Looks like this mission is going to be your swan song before you take command of the General Hammond."

Sam beamed at him happily.

ooOoo


	7. Barbarians at the gates

**Note to Readers: **I am trying to keep the series time lines rational and make them fit with the story, but there will be some necessary deviances for which I apologise in advance. I am not sure whether Daniel, Teal'c or Vala were visible in the last Atlantis episode of Enemy at the Gate, but in my story they are not and this story is set more or less around that time. Sam Carter is in command of the SGC. She and Cam Mitchell never made it to Juna.

**Disclaimer: **I own none of the basic concepts of either Stargate SG1, or anything else. However all original characters do belong to me as does the basic plot for this story. Excerpts from the works of Tolkien belong solely to the Tolkien Estates. The professor belongs to himself.

"Wild, dark times are rumbling toward us, and the prophet who wishes to write a new apocalypse will have to invent entirely new beasts, and beasts so terrible that the ancient animal symbols of St. John will seem like cooing doves and cupids in comparison." -

**HEINRICH HEINE, "Lutetia; or, Paris," Augsberg Gazette, 1842 **

**Chapter Seven – Barbarians at the gate**

**A small, sparsely inhabited planet in a Galaxy far, far away...**

The farmer stretched and felt his joints and muscles crack. It had been a long day, but the harvest must needs be gathered before the dark time. The dark time was something that they all accepted as part and parcel of their lives. It had always been so. They had nine months, as they reckoned months, of pure unadulterated sunshine interposed with refreshing rain showers which gave them the ideal weather for raising crops, but then they had three months of unending night and low temperatures during which nothing grew.

A scientist would have been able to tell them that this was because of the position of their planet and its distance from their sun. An astronomer would have been able to tell them that their planet also hung on the edge of space next door to an inexplicable void in space where no other planet existed. It wasn't a black hole, in fact to most astronomers it would have been an entirely new phenomenon, but new it certainly was not. It had existed there for millennium. Just a deep, seemingly impenetrable, wall of darkness.

However the farmer knew nothing of such things. To him the stars and the sun were just objects in the sky which gave them their weather and their calm and peaceful way of life. They were unaffected by the trials that occupied those in the more inhabited galaxies of the universe, they knew nothing of those things. To them the world was _just_ the world. It spun on its axis and nobody questioned what was out there beyond the blue skies and the white clouds.

He smiled to himself at the sight of his son and daughter throwing small clumps of the hay they had gathered at each other in celebration of the end of the day and a job well done. He broke into laughter as his son ducked and one of the clumps of hay thrown rather haphazardly by his daughter landed squarely on top of the head of his dour farmworker. The clump sat comically on his thatch of grizzled hair and the loose soil trickled down his face. He shook it off and swatted at both youngsters who giggled and darted about just out of his reach.

He shook his head and started to gather up the remnants of the picnic his wife had prepared for them as a luncheon while they worked. The wine bottle still had more than a glass' worth inside it so he pushed the cork stopper firmly into it. That would be quite nice to share with his wife while sitting in front of a warm fire after the young ones had gone to bed. The dark time was only a couple of weeks away. the nights had begun to draw in and the dark brought with it a chill in the light evening breezes that arose regularly.

"Papa?" He was brought out of his reverie by his daughter's puzzled tone. "What is that?"

"Eh?" He stepped over to where his son and daughter and their farmworker were standing staring into the northern horizon of the land. A band of what appeared to be dark clouds was steadily rising into the air and also growing ever closer.

"Bah, it's naught but storm clouds." The farmworker wiped his nose on his sleeve and spat on the ground.

The farmer kept staring into the darkness. In the time it had taken them to clear up and prepare to return to the warmth of the farmhouse, night had fallen. He glanced behind him in the direction of the farm and the nearest small town. The air was so clear around them that he could see the comforting lights of both farmhouse and the more distant town twinkling clearly down in the valley. A direct contrast to the thick black clouds that were approaching. He felt a quiver of unease.

The carthorse which pulled the cart laden high with hay and which was also their transport home snorted and jerked at its reins which had been loosely wrapped around part of the rough wooden fence that bordered the north field. Its eyes were rolling and showing the whites indicating fear of something and the farmer immediately went over to calm it down a little. But to no avail, the horse continued to snort and jerk around in fear and sweat had begun to blossom in darker wet patches on its coat.

Something was spooking it for sure. The farmer turned around to see that the dark was now a solid mass moving towards them at great speed. It could not be more than a league away at the very most. Suddenly the farmer was overtaken by a sense of great dread. That dark band was much more than just cloud. Carried within it was a danger, he knew it immediately. They had to get back, into the safety of the house, bar the doors and the windows.

"That's no cloud." He whispered to himself and the first pangs of real fear began to claw at him.

He looked at the horse which was now sweating profusely and shivering in a paroxysm of fear and he grimaced. The farmhouse was a good half a mile down the track. Even given that the bank of darkness was moving so swiftly there was a good chance they could still outrun it. The horse whinnied pitifully and stretched at the traces of the cart and the farmer took an instant decision. He turned to the others.

"Get out of here, head to the farmhouse, tell your mother I will be along shortly." He yelled at them.

They turned to him with startled faces. "Aren't you coming Papa?" His daughter's voice sounded anxious.

"I am going to turn the horse loose. Whatever is in that cloud, it's frightening him." He started to unbuckle the harness and the traces. "Get out of here all of you, _now_! Run fast, do _not_ look back. Don't worry about me, I will see you back at the house."

Something about the tone in the man's voice galvanised the older farmworker. He grabbed the girl's hand and began to drag her down the track, followed by the boy who started to run, but then hesitated and looked back at his father anxiously. The farmer waved him on.

"Go! I will be right behind you."

"Come on you two." The farmworker tried to keep the wavering tone of fear out of his voice. A cold black dread had begun to infiltrate his every fibre and part of him desired nothing more than to just sink into a huddle on the ground and pretend that nothing was wrong. Only the two youngsters and their safety stopped him. "Let's have a race, see who gets back first eh?"

The last the farmer saw of the three of them was them tearing down the track towards the warmth and comparative safety of the farmhouse as though all the hounds of hell were after them.

As the looming darkness grew ever closer, he wrenched at the last buckle and dragged the cart away. Normally a two man job given that it was heavy with hay. The horse immediately took advantage of being free, kicked up its heels and fled across towards the fields towards the low hills and hopefully, safety in one of the many deep caves.

The farmer started to run. Half a mile down the track he felt the first icy tendrils of the dark flick at his heels. His lungs were practically bursting with the effort of trying to outrun it and his chest was burning as though someone had lit a fire inside it. And as the dark licked at his heels he thought he could hear an insistent voice telling him that all would be well if only he would lie down and sleep.

_Sleep...._

He stumbled over a grassy hillock in the middle of the track and let out a sob. The desire to sleep was overwhelming, but some small light of self survival kept him on his feet. He turned into the farmyard and saw the anxious figure of his wife standing in the doorway with his farmworker staring over her shoulder.

He knew he would not make it. A cold numbing sensation had begun to spread up his legs and he knew he was lost. The darkness had almost overtaken him entirely.

"Shut the door, get everyone into the cellar and _stay_ there!" He screamed hoarsely at her. It was beginning to get hard to breathe, There seemed to be a cold, suffocating band around his chest.

The last thing he saw before the dark and cold completely overtook him was his farmworker dragging his wife away and then the door slammed shut.

The last his wife and the farmworker saw of the farmer was him being engulfed by a deep, thick and impenetrable darkness which proceeded to roll inexorably over the farmhouse.

Down in the cellar they huddled, paralysed with terror as the house creaked and groaned alarmingly. The very walls buckled as though some awful weight was pressing on them and an intense cold pervaded their very bones. Apart from that, the only _sound_ that could be heard was the young girl's terrified hiccuping sobs as her mother tried to hold her close and comfort her.

ooOoo

**The Ruins on Planet P3A-884**

Teal'c played his torch on the stone walls of the chamber. The light flickered across what may or may not have been a once brightly coloured frieze on the far wall. The Jaffa picked his way across a floor littered with stone and broken remnants which could have once been furniture of a sort. He frowned deeply at the faint figures painted on the weathered stone. It was impossible to make out what had originally been painted on there since the bright colours and outlines had long since faded from exposure to the elements for what had probably been centuries.

He pursed his lips and played the torch upwards. Part of the ceiling had fallen in revealing a cloudless blue sky. This place had been abandoned for a very long time.

"Found anything Teal'c?" Daniel Jackson's slightly metallic sounding voice crackled through Teal'c's radio.

"Nothing of note Daniel Jackson. There is what used to be a frieze on one of the walls, but it has long since faded."

"I'll come and take a look. There might be some information I can salvage from it." The radio clicked off and a couple of minutes later Daniel's dusty head appeared around the entranceway.

"Be careful Daniel Jackson, there is much masonry on the floor." Teal'c gave a tight smile and moved away so that Daniel could get a clearer view.

Outside they could hear Vala shuffling about. There was a scraping sound and then the sound of small stones skittering down and then a resounding crash.

"Bother." The disgusted note in Vala's voice said it all.

Daniel rolled his eyes at Teal'c and they both headed out into the central courtyard which most of the main buildings in the ruins led into expecting to see Vala covered in a pile of rocks at the very most, but she was nowhere to be seen.

Daniel shot Teal'c a startled look. "What the hell has she gone and done now? She was out here just a minute ago clearing some dust from that corner over there."

He waved a hand at a building which only had three walls remaining. A set of wide steps led up to the building which may or may not have been an important one, but the wear and damage from the elements made it far too difficult to estimate what it had been used for.

"Vala!" He shouted, while Teal'c strode over to examine the ruined building. "Vala! Where the hell are you? What did you do?"

Silence was his only answer and a small worm of worry began to wriggle in his gut. Vala was rarely silent for very long. Perhaps she was lying unconscious down a hole or worse, someone had dragged her off, but what kind of someone? There was nobody around on the planet apart from themselves and SG8 who were on guard duty at the gate. That they knew about anyway.

"VALA!" He shouted louder and reached for his radio to get Major Miller to send a couple of Marines to help them search.

"Over here Daniel Jackson." Teal'c's calm tones interrupted his action. He was standing looking down at something in the corner.

"Is she okay?" Daniel charged over. "Is she hurt?"

Teal'c raised an eyebrow. "See for yourself."

A large hole had appeared in the corner of the paving stones that Vala had been industriously sweeping the dirt from. Daniel peered over the edge to see Vala sitting about six foot down on a large sarcophagus like box swinging her legs and scrubbing at the muck on her face. Her dark hair was sprinkled liberally with white dust but otherwise she looked none the worse for her fall.

She smiled brightly up at them. "Oh hi Daniel, hello Muscles. I think I may have found something! There's also a passageway in here as well." She waved her hand into the gloom of the underground room.

Daniel felt a frisson of excitement, as he always did when faced with ancient mysteries and puzzles.

"Don't move." He said waving a hand at Vala. "We're coming down."

"Is that wise Daniel Jackson? Would it not be better to pull her up and then come back with a larger team. This was the lair of a Goa'uld who was one of Cronus' closest Underlords and the most trusted by him. We have assumed that he left, but we do not know for sure if he did. The box Vala sits on is likely a sarcophagus, such as the one Hathor was in when she was sealed up in South America. He may be in there waiting for someone to wake him."

Daniel sighed, although part of him knew Teal'c was right. "I doubt that Teal'c but I guess you're right, we can't take the chance. That certainly looks like a sarcophagus, but it also looks a bit damaged. Let's get Vala out of there and head back through the gate. We can give our findings to General Landry and let _him_ make the decision."

He was regretful. Every inch of him wanted to explore. He was sure that some amazing discoveries were down in that underground vault, but at the same time he didn't want a live Goa'uld to be one of them.

Teal'c had already reached into his pack for some rope and sent one end of it down to a puzzled Vala with the instruction that she tie it firmly around her waist. He then looped it around a solid looking broken off column and prepared to take the stress of the rope as they pulled her up. Daniel bent down over the hole.

"We're going to pull you up Vala."

"I can _see _that." Vala sounded disgruntled. "What I want to know is why. It's not like you to not want to explore Daniel. You're normally champing at the bit. Don't you want to know what's in the box?" Daniel heard her thump on it and winced.

"Try not to disturb anything on the sarcophagus Vala. We don't know if it's operational or not."

Vala muttered something under her breath and climbed up on top of it, carefully avoiding anything that vaguely looked like a control or button. She tugged on the rope.

"Well, come on then, if you're going to."

They hoisted her over the edge of the hole and onto solid ground. She brushed herself off and then glared at Daniel in query. "Well?"

"I _do_ want to explore." Daniel said defensively. "But as Teal'c pointed out, we're hardly equipped or armed well enough to deal with anything that might not be so friendly. We're going to head back through the gate and see whether General Landry might authorise a proper, fully armed search of the ruins."

Vala harrumphed. "Hmm, surely you're both not scared of the nasty old Goa'uld that might be hidden in the sarcophagus are you?"

Teal'c raised another eyebrow. "I am not afraid of _any_ Goa'uld. Indeed, stories told about this particular Goa'uld indicated that he did not rule with cruelty. I heard Apophis speak of him only once, to say that he was a weak Lord who ruled with kindness and only his long friendship with Cronus had kept him alive and under the System Lord's protection."

Vala batted her eyelashes at the large man. "So....you'd like to meet him, right Muscles?" She winked and dug him playfully in the ribs. "Go on...you _know _you'd like an introduction."

Teal'c moved away from her probing elbow and managed to look affronted. "I have never wished to meet any Goa'uld." He chided. "And I would much prefer it if he was not lying in wait in the sarcophagus. You may rest assured that if he is, I will use my weapon on him. He will not rise from his sleep without greatly regretting it."

"Well be that as it may, we had better cover up the hole..." Vala opened her mouth and Daniel hastily continued. "....because although there is no-one else here, we can't be absolutely sure, so we'll make it look like there's no hole there. We'll head back to the gate after we've done that."

To Daniel's vast relief Vala was quite quiet as they dragged enough loose masonry around the hole around to prevent anyone else from either falling through it and for it to look as though there was no hole there from a distance. Nobody just idling past would even know it was there unless they were specifically looking for it.

However, as they walked back to the gate Vala suddenly clutched at Teal'c's arm. He looked down at her and cocked his head on one side in question.

She bit her lip. "What if...what if Cernunnos _was _in that sarcophagus and was imprisoned there for a reason? What if we've now activated the thing and given him a way out?"

Both men stopped dead in their tracks. Daniel glared accusingly at her. "What did you do?"

She shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot and made a deprecating gesture. "Well..._nothing_...I don't think. Only...there's a teensy weensy little tiny chance..." She made a gesture of something very tiny between her thumb and forefinger. "...that I jabbed at something with my foot as I was propelled upwards. It _might_ have activated something on the sarcophagus. If it was working. Which of course it wasn't was it?"

Her voice trailed off as she registered her companions' expressions. She tried to smile brightly.

"We don't know Vala. We weren't down there. _Was_ it broken?" Daniel's voice was dangerously calm and Teal'c had already readied his weapon and was staring suspiciously about him as though he expected a maniacal, stir-crazy Goa'uld to leap out at them any second.

Vala glanced behind her and tried for another of her bright smiles. "Well...um...I don't see any Goa'uld hotfooting it over here brandishing a Kara-Kesh, do you?"

A sudden crunching underfoot made them all jump.

"Dr Jackson?" Major Miller and two of his men had came upon them while they were talking. "I've got a message from the SGC. From Colonel Carter." His face looked grim.

"What's happened? What's wrong?"

"Well it seems that Colonel Carter and Colonel Mitchell never got to Juna. They were on the Daedalus and were immediately recalled back by General Landry. The General has been ordered to Washington DC and Colonel Carter has temporary command of the SGC. There's some major emergency. Something to do with Atlantis, the Wraith and earth. I couldn't get the full story because the connection was terminated from their end."

Daniel's heart sank. "Did you try to dial the gate?" His lips felt dry.

"First thing we did after the connection went down Doctor. No dice. Either the earth gate is in use or something has disabled it. We're stuck here, at least for the moment."

Vala sat down on one of the large boulders that peppered the area up to the gate. "It's something big isn't it?"

The Major nodded grimly. "Yes ma'am, I think it is."

"Can we dial anywhere else?" Vala asked.

"We could do that I suppose." Daniel mused, then he looked over at the Major. "Should we do that, or perhaps set up camp here?"

"If we dial another gate and go elsewhere, we don't know what is happening out there." The major said. "If the Wraith have found their way here into our galaxy, then we don't know whether they have already overrun some of he nearest planets and this planet is in a system adjoining ours so it's not that far away. My advice is that we stay put and make camp until we can make contact with earth again."

Teal'c nodded. "I agree,"

"Oh yes, let's _do_ stay here with the maniac Goa'uld finally freed from his prison of who knows how long ago." Vala pursed her lips and rolled her eyes.

All she succeeded in doing was to thoroughly confuse the Major who looked at Daniel in query. "Dr Jackson?"

Daniel shook his head in exasperation. "Don't ask Major. Let's just find a decent place to camp, preferably not too far from the gate."

"I can leave a guard on the gate Dr Jackson. Just in case."

Daniel nodded. "Do that Major, we'll head back to the ruins and start to pitch camp. At least the buildings will give us some kind of shelter, just in case it rains."

The Major glanced up at the cloudless blue sky, but kept his own counsel as to what he was thinking. "Okay Dr Jackson. We'll be with you shortly." He walked back to the gate and his waiting team and Daniel and the others headed back towards the ruins.

Vala danced gaily along the path, blithely forgetting that she provided a prime target for any maniac Goa'uld or anything else for that matter.

. "Oh yes, let's make camp where the maniac Goa'uld is probably free and prowling around looking for victims. I just can't wait!"

Daniel shook his head. "That is some imagination. I thought I was bad."

"Indeed Daniel Jackson, she makes Cernunnos sound like a vampire from an old movie."

Daniel glanced over to check whether the Jaffa was joking or not, but his impassive face gave nothing away. "Er...you don't think she's_ right _do you Teal'c?"

"I have no idea Daniel Jackson." Teal'c readied his Zat. "But I intend to ensure that I am vigilant. Just in case."

Daniel groaned to himself. The Wraith at the gate and a possible Goa'uld in a box. Could it actually get any worse?"

ooOoo


	8. The Chain of the Oppressor

**Note to Readers: **I am trying to keep the series time lines rational and make them fit with the story, but there will be some necessary deviances for which I apologise in advance. I am not sure whether Daniel, Teal'c or Vala were visible in the last Atlantis episode of Enemy at the Gate, but in my story they are not and this story is set more or less around that time. Sam Carter is in command of the SGC. She and Cam Mitchell never made it to Juna.

**Disclaimer: **I own none of the basic concepts of either Stargate SG1, or anything else. However all original characters do belong to me as does the basic plot for this story. Excerpts from the works of Tolkien belong solely to the Tolkien Estates. The professor belongs to himself. The description of the item in the sarcophagus is owed entirely to the genius of **Fiondil,** who is possibly one of the best writers of anything to do with the Valar that I have _ever_ come across. I hope she does not mind my borrowing it.

"Alice came to a fork in the road. "Which road do I take?" she asked.  
"Where do you want to go?" responded the Cheshire cat.  
"I don't know," Alice answered.  
"Then," said the cat, "it doesn't matter."**  
~Lewis Carroll, **_**Alice in Wonderland**_

**Chapter Seven – The Chain of the Oppressor**

A faint light trickle of fine dirt filtered down from the rocks placed over the hole in the corner of a derelict building. It dropped with a whisper down onto the now open sarcophagus which was empty of any kind of organic life form.

However it was not _completely_ empty.

The brightness of something not quite of this or any other world still filled the inside of the sarcophagus with a glow that could not be darkened by anything as minor as a bit of dust. A couple of rodent like creatures who made their home in the darkness of the underground part of the ruins cautiously skittered over towards the open box. One of the them was even brave enough to run up the side of the ornate sarcophagus and perch on the top, whiskers quivering in the musty air and sharp nose snuffling.

It seemed unlikely that there was any food in the box, but the creature had gone too far to go back. It leapt down into the depths, where the glow was now even more brightly illuminating the dark recesses of the area around it.

There was silence for a second. The creature's mate scrabbled a couple of steps forward towards the box, also sniffing cautiously to see whether there was anything dangerous where her more intrepid mate had already gone. Then the air was filled with the sharp, high distressing sounds of an animal in pain. The remaining rodent's fur bristled up on its back and it laid its ears back, then it flew away from the box as the high thin screams faded into utter silence.

The creature flew back into its hole and crouched, shivering from tip of nose to tip of tail. That its mate was dead, it had no doubt. That whatever was contained in the box was not food and was dangerous, it also had no doubt. It watched with bright beady terrified eyes as the brightness emanating from the box slowly faded to a warm glow, then it left as silently as it could.

This was no longer a place it wished to call home.

ooOoo

Daniel Jackson stretched and stood up from his makeshift bedroll, shivering slightly from the sharpness of the early morning air. He glanced around at the still slumbering, and in fact snoring loud enough to rattle windows out of the frame, form of Vala and also a couple of the marines who had done their watch through the night hours. He amazed at the fact that the two soldiers could even get a wink of sleep with the noise.

Teal'c was standing beside the marine on current guard stag and staring around him. Everything looked extremely peaceful. No rampaging, insane Goa'uld hell-bent on murder and mayhem at least, which was something to be grateful for.

Then he smelled it and his nose twitched. Coffee. That delectable smell was coffee. His nose, always sensitive to that aroma led him over to where the Major was busy brewing up in a battered mess tin.

He grinned up at Daniel. "Want some?" He gestured at the mess tin.

"Do bears wear furry overcoats?" Daniel blew on his hands and hunkered down beside him.

The major laughed and poured some of the dark liquid into a plastic mug. "No milk I'm afraid but we do have some sugar."

Daniel shook his head. "Doesn't matter." He mumbled as he sipped the hot, welcome brew. "Everything been quiet?"

The major grinned. "Not a peep out of anything, we tried the gate again, but still no deal. Whatever is going on back on earth, it's big." He gestured at the ruined building where the entrance to the underground area was. "Nothing from there either. If there was anything to worry about, there isn't now. If there _was _someone in the sarcophagus you found he didn't get out of the gate."

Daniel pursed his lips. "Well I suggest that we wake sleeping beauty and get started while the day is early. At least we don't have anything dangerous to worry about, but perhaps if you leave a couple of marines with us while you guys watch the gate?"

"Yeah, you can have Schneider and Evans." The major gestured at the two sleeping marines, then stood up, threw the dregs of his coffee in some bushes and prepared to organise the day.

Daniel sighed. It was obviously his job to wake Vala and she was like a myopic, grumpy rabbit in the mornings.

ooOoo

Vala sat back on her knees and gazed at the object in front of them with something approaching awe in her eyes. "Wow. That is _some _piece of jewellery, but it looks far too heavy and ornate even for a Goa'uld."

Daniel carefully brushed the remaining dust from the shining links of metal and even Teal'c forgot himself enough for a moment in order to peer down at the exposed treasure.

"I'm not even sure what this is made of. It seems to be an amalgam of most of the metals we know on earth." Daniel gently touched the area between the links. "And this, this I don't know _what_ it is."

The item in front of them was clearly a chain of some kind and they could see that it was made from copper, silver, tin, lead, iron and gold, welded to a substance of uttermost hardness, brightness and smoothness. Between each link was another metal, an alloy that seemed to possess all the properties of the other six and many of its own. It flashed green and red depending on the angle as a shaft of sunlight shone down on it as it lay in its hiding place. Daniel noticed that there also appeared to be two manacles and four fetters made from this unknown metal. The entirety glittered with a deadly beauty that sent shivers through him. Something niggled at the back of his mind, a memory, or perhaps something he had read and consigned to memory.

"It appears to be some kind of method of constraint." Teal'c mused.

Vala wiggled her eyebrows at him suggestively. "You mean like a Goa'uld chastity belt Muscles?"

Her voice held a teasing note and Daniel hastily intervened before she could shoot off on a flight of fancy and confuse the Jaffa more than she normally did with her ramblings.

"I'm pretty sure that the Goa'uld weren't all that keen on chastity belts." He began.

"No indeed. Not if Baal was anything to go by." Vala interrupted cheerfully and gently brushed her finger along the chain. A residue of some sort of electrical discharge sent a slight shock across her skin and she snapped her hand back quickly. "Ow..."

Daniel 's head snapped around. "What happened?"

"Some kind of shock...as though the metal was charged with some sort of power." Her brow wrinkled in confusion. "It feels really odd, like needles and..." Her voice trailed and her brow furrowed as she tried to remember the modern earth idiom.

"Pins." Daniel absently supplied the word she was searching for as he took her hand and turned it over to examine the offending finger. There was a faint, but clearly visible, blueish static dancing lightly across the surface of her skin.

Teal'c also bent down in curiosity. "There appears to be some kind of visible electrical charge on her skin." He leaned over and also gently touched the surface of the chain, but whatever the source of the static it had obviously fully discharged itself into Vala and the Jaffa's finger remained unaffected. "It has gone now."

Daniel bit his lip. "We should probably box this thing up, possibly in a lead lined container. We don't know what it was used for and the metal in between the links is like nothing I have ever seen before. It could be radioactive"

"What?" Vala squeaked as she drew back. "Why didn't you say something earlier? I _touched_ it." She rubbed her hand frantically up and down her BDU's.

Daniel shook his head in exasperation. "Did I _ask_ you to go ahead and touch it? After all the years of being involved with alien technology I kind of assumed that you wouldn't go jumping in with both feet when we find something the origins of which we don't know. Although god knows _why_ I thought that." He pointed at her finger and she immediately put one hand behind her back defensively. "How does it feel?"

"I _said _it felt like pins and nails...weren't you listening?"

"Needles." Daniel said patiently. "Pins and needles."

"_Whatever_....sharp thin pointy things." She sulked. "It didn't feel bad if _that's_ what you mean. It was a bit like being tickled.. painfully, and I don't feel ill or anything."

"Nevertheless, I still think we need to seal it up and get Sam's fine mind on what it could be and get Dr Lamb to look at your hand." He turned to Teal'c. "Can you go have a word with the Major and see if we can can contact earth yet. We're going to need a container brought through from the from the SGC to transport this back."

The Jaffa bowed and smiled slightly. "Of course Daniel Jackson. I will return shortly."

He climbed up the makeshift ramp they had built from the large rocks strewn around the underground room and disappeared into the sunlight. Fine dust filtered down into the room which made Daniel sneeze and Vala cough slightly, but it soon settled, casting a fine dusty veil over their hair and the sarcophagus.

Daniel turned his attention back to the item in the sarcophagus. He brushed some of the dust off the chain and then turned slightly so that he was looking at it from another angle. He tentatively touched one of the shackles but it seemed that the chain was not about to do anything else other than lie there in its hiding place.

_"Daniel?_" Vala's voice was hushed.

Daniel felt a frisson of irritation. So far they had found no other tablets, no writing or pictures on the walls to indicate anything, apart from finding the chain and the obviously broken sarcophagus, the whole thing had been a bit of a wild goose chase. He felt frustrated and not in the mood for Vala's chatter.

"Daniel..." Her voice was more insistent and she tugged at his sleeve which irritated him even more.

"For heaven's sake Vala, _what_?" He looked up and glared at her only to find that her attention was not on him at all. She was actually staring into one of the dark corners of the room, her mouth open in a round O. His eyes followed her gaze, the brush dropped from his nerveless fingers and his mouth also dropped open.

ooOoo

**In another dimension far, far away...**

Cronus knew something unusual was happening even before the being he had come to think of as his guide came into his quarters and sat down in the carved chair he usually sat in, his dark wine coloured velvet robes falling gracefully around his tall slender form as he made himself comfortable. Once settled he smiled at the creature hanging in stasis before him.

Today, he wore his blue black hair loose apart from four intricately woven braids, two on either side of his forehead and looped back to form part of the bright circlet with a dark gem that he wore across his brow. However as beautiful a being as he undoubtedly was. it was the grave expression in his penetrating dark eyes that caught Cronus' attention. The four tall guards bowed with their right hands over their hearts in what Cronus had come to understand was a traditional greeting and sign of respect. The being inclined his dark head graciously to them and they left the room silently.

He then waved his hand over the stasis container and Cronus found himself able to both move and speak again.

"Something has happened." Cronus made a statement rather than asked a question.

The being nodded. "Yes, the thing we have feared for millennia has now begun."

"Yet you and your people are safe here, this is another dimension is it not?"

There was a moment's silence, then the being smiled. "And being safe means that we should not care about those under our care?" His voice was gentle.

Cronus was perplexed. "Under your care? You speak as though the races of the galaxy were your offspring."

"In a manner of speaking.. they are, or at least our responsibility." The being stood and took a couple of paces towards the stasis container. "We have decided that for you to better understand, you must now see the place you find yourself in. You have learned almost all you can solely within these confines."

A touch of fear brushed the symbiote's mind. He had felt safe in his container and for the first time in millennia he had felt no need for the protection of a host. He discovered to his astonishment that he had no real wish to leave it. The being seemed to sense the fear and smiled reassuringly. "You have no need to fear, you must leave the container of course, but we will provide a temporary host for you."

Cronus' voice held a tinge of wry amusement. "You have no fear that I will overpower this host? It is, as you know, what we do."

The being said nothing, but a few seconds later a tall shining form shimmered into being beside him. The newcomer inclined his head to the other and they spoke softly for a moment in what Cronus had come to understand was their own language. Then the being waved his hand over the container and reached in. His grip was gentle and Cronus felt no need to struggle, yet in the presence of such beauty he felt ashamed of his ugliness. He also felt shame at the fact of what he would have to do in order to take this beautiful host.

"You must not fear, your host is well able to control you and he is also more than able to expel you should the need arise. He feels no distaste for your form or the way you take a host, he only views you as yet another of Atar's children. In any case you will have to be released back into your container once you have learned what you need to know. For a little while at least."

The being's dark eyes were filled with compassion. He held the symbiote out to the other who took Cronus in an equally gentle grasp. The symbiote waited with resignation to complete the act that would mean the host accepted him, but instead felt nothing more than a pleasant prickling sensation across his skin, a swirling of his senses and an utterly pleasing feeling of floating in a haze of golden lights. All through it he was a aware of a gentle, but very strong mind in control of everything, including his own actions. but he didn't care. He had never felt as wonderful as he did at that moment in time. He felt euphoric and intoxicated.

When Cronus reluctantly forced himself to consciousness, mostly at the gentle, amused urging of his host it had to be said, he found himself looking through living eyes at the being standing before him. A being whose eyes twinkled back at him.

_You may speak now little one._ The host gently reminded him with a chuckle.

Cronus stared at the being in front of him and suddenly knew his name. He took a step forward and swallowed through a real living throat.

"Namo?" He queried hesitantly, although his voice felt dull and rusty with disuse. "You are Lord of the Halls of Waiting and of the dead." He was aware of a growing sense of wonder when he realised finally just who this personage was.

Namo, Lord of Mandos and the Doomsman of the Valar, beloved servant and child of Eru Iluvator, smiled and bowed in the same way as the guards always did, with his right hand on his heart.

"Well met, Cronus of the Goa'uld. Welcome to Aman."

ooOoo


End file.
